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Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale bread, water, fat, butter, spices, salt, eggs, and dried fruit.

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 ↓

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak stale bread in cold water, then press out the excess water.

  2. Stir until smooth.

Make the batter

  1. Melt fat and butter in a saucepan over medium heat, then mix in the soaked bread.

  2. Stir until it loosens from the saucepan, then cool slightly.

  3. Add flavorings, salt, beaten eggs, and dried fruit, and mix well.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the mixture for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve with lettuce and fruit sauce, or with tomato or apple 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Bread + macetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,005 recipes

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

Butter and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it steams.
Stale bread
Provides the body of the pudding, absorbing liquid to form a soft crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the batter.
Fat
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Dried fruit
Adds sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Cool the bread mixture before adding the eggs. Eggs added to a very hot mixture can begin to scramble unevenly, which makes the pudding grainy instead of smooth and evenly set.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, 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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