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Dessert

Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, currants, candied orange peel, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,746 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the bread crumbs, scalded milk, sugar, egg yolks, currants or raisins, candied orange peel, salt, and nutmeg in the order given.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for three hours.

  2. Serve with wine or creamy 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. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the pudding and add richness to the custard-like crumb.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding and absorb the milk.
Scalded milk
Supplies the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and tenderness to the pudding.
Currants or raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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