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Dessert

Red Currant Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with sliced bread, red currants, butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Red Currant Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Layer sliced bread and red currants in a pudding bowl, sprinkling sugar and adding lumps of butter between layers until the bowl is full.

Steam and serve

  1. Place a plate on top and steam for at least two hours.

  2. Turn out a few minutes before serving to allow the juice to penetrate the top layer of bread.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl and mix the beaten eggs with the milk.

  4. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the pudding before serving.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + red curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together84 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the fruit juice and custard.
Red currants
Add tart fruit flavour and juice that moistens the bread as it steams.
Eggs
Set with the milk to form a custard that enriches the pudding.
Milk
Combines with the eggs to make a soft, moist custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the layers.

The step that matters

Steaming for at least two hours. Steam must stay steady and the bowl must be kept covered so the bread cooks through and softens evenly. Too little time leaves the centre dense and wet.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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