Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding

A boiled pudding made from dry bread, water, eggs, sugar, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dry bread pieces in warm water until soft.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and raisins, and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the mixture in a bag or pudding mold for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Serve with vanilla sauce.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + raisintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry bread
Soaks up the warm water and gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, holding the pudding together.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the bread and eggs.

The step that matters

Soak the bread until soft. Fully softened bread breaks down evenly and blends smoothly with the eggs and sugar. Dry or lumpy pieces can leave dense, uneven patches in the finished pudding.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, 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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes