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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with soaked bread, suet, sugar, currants, egg, milk, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

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 ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak the bread in cold water until soft.

  2. Drain the water and squeeze the bread dry with your hands.

  3. Beat the bread with a fork until smooth.

Mix and steam

  1. Add the chopped suet, sugar, currants, and beaten egg; mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased basin.

  3. Steam for 1.5 to 2 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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, soaked to a soft, smooth base.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist during steaming.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps it set as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savoury notes of the suet.
Milk
Adds moisture that helps the bread soften and hold together.

The step that matters

Squeezing the soaked bread dry. Excess water left in the bread dilutes the mixture and can make the pudding soggy or loose once steamed. Squeezing removes this water so the bread can absorb the egg and fat evenly and hold its shape.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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