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Dessert

Bread and Fruit Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale bread crumbs, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, fruit, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Bread and Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread crumbs in rich milk.

  2. Add butter, sugar, salt, and spice to taste.

  3. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

  4. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture.

  5. Drain canned fruit from syrup.

  6. Fold in the fruit.

Steam and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered pudding mold.

  2. Steam for 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.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when steamed.
Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its body and soft, tender crumb.
Rich milk
Moistens the bread and forms the custard that the eggs help set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavor and browning.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Fruit
Adds moisture, sweetness, and fruity flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the egg custard through without overheating it. Too much heat or boiling water can make the eggs curdle or leave the pudding rough and watery.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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

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