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Dessert

Black Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, currants, lemon rind, spices, grated black bread, wine, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Black Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks, currants or raisins, lemon rind, cinnamon, cloves, salt, grated black bread, and wine or brandy. Mix well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Steam and serve

  1. Oil a pudding pan and pour the mixture into it.

  2. Steam for 2½ hours.

  3. Serve with vanilla sauce or white wine 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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the pudding a light, tender body and rich flavour.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help bind it as it sets, adding richness and structure.
Egg whites
Folded in whipped, they add air and lightness to the batter as it steams.
Grated black bread
Provides the bulk of the pudding and soaks up the liquid, giving it body.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the butter cream to a light, fluffy texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten and folded gently; overmixing deflates them, so the pudding steams up less light and more dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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