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Pudding

A steamed bread crumb pudding with ratafias, candied peel, suet, lemon rind, and sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crumbs

  1. Pass the bread crumbs through a fine sieve.

  2. In a bowl, combine half of the bread crumbs with boiling milk and let soak for 30 minutes.

Mix the batter

  1. Add the remaining bread crumbs, crushed ratafias, sugar, candied peel, suet, lemon rind, salt, and baking powder. Mix well.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring the mixture thoroughly after each addition.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Let the pudding stand for a minute or two, then carefully turn it out and 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 body of the pudding and soak up the hot milk to set a soft structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it steams.
Suet
Adds fat that gives the pudding a rich, moist texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Beating each egg in fully before the next keeps the batter smooth and evenly emulsified, so the eggs set uniformly rather than curdling or leaving pockets during steaming.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, 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.

More bread pudding recipes

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