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Dessert

Crumb Pudding

A baked pudding made from bread crumbs, suet, currants, molasses, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Crumb Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Soften the bread crumbs in boiling water.

  2. Mix in the chopped suet, currants, molasses, eggs, and salt.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Currant + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,817 recipes
  4. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Bread + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the boiling water and form the body of the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, color, and a deep, rich flavor.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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