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Dessert

An Excellent Small Mincemeat Pudding

A pudding made with bread crumbs soaked in milk, mincemeat, brandy, eggs, and served with a sauce of butter, wine, brandy, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

An Excellent Small Mincemeat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pudding

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in sufficient boiling milk until well soaked.

  2. Once nearly cold, drain excess milk from the bread crumbs.

  3. Mix the soaked bread crumbs with mincemeat, brandy, and beaten eggs.

  4. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered basin and fill it completely.

Boil and make the sauce

  1. Boil the pudding for 2 hours.

  2. For the sauce, combine melted butter, white wine, brandy, lemon juice, and sugar to taste.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Brandy + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Mincemeat
Supplies the main flavour, sweetness and moisture of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds together and sets when boiled.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
White wine
Thins the sauce and adds a light acidity that balances the sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet sauce and cuts its richness.

The step that matters

Fill the basin completely before boiling. Leaving air gaps lets the pudding expand and sag unevenly as it cooks. A full, well-buttered basin also helps the pudding release cleanly once turned out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, brandy, egg, butter, white wine, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, brandy, egg, butter, white wine, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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