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Dessert

Newmarket Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding made with currants, milk, eggs, and flavored with lemon rind, bay leaf, or cinnamon.

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 ↓

Newmarket Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter the bread slices and layer them in a buttered pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle currants between the layers.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk with lemon rind, bay leaf, or cinnamon for flavor.

  2. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, egg white, and cornflour.

  3. Add the sweetened milk to the egg mixture and stir well.

  4. Pour the custard over the bread layers in the dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the custard is set and the top is lightly browned.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Yolks and white thicken the custard so it sets into a soft, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving the pudding its creamy, moist body.
Bread
Soaks up the custard and forms the layered, tender structure of the pudding.
Cornflour
Starch thickens the custard and helps it hold its shape when baked.
Currants
Dried fruit adds pockets of sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Baking until the custard is set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves a runny custard, while overbaking can make it curdle and turn watery and rubbery.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, milk, egg, sugar, lemon, cinnamon. 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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