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Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked bread crumbs, milk, molasses, fruit, spices, butter, salt, baking soda, and flour, boiled or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in hot milk until soft.

  2. Add molasses, chopped fruit or raisins, spices, butter, salt, baking soda, and flour to the soaked bread crumbs.

  3. Mix well and pour the mixture into a suitable pot.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil or steam for three hours.

  2. Serve with sweet 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the liquid as they soften.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, rich flavor.
All-purpose flour
Helps bind the mixture and gives it body as it cooks.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses' acidity to lighten the texture and deepen color.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender, moist crumb.

The step that matters

Boil or steam for three hours. Gentle, steady moist heat cooks the starchy mixture through evenly. If the water boils dry or the pot is left uncovered, the pudding can dry out or cook unevenly.

“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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