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Dessert

Steamed Bread Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Soak stale bread in cold water, press out excess water, and stir until smooth.

  2. Melt ½ cup of fat and ¼ cup of butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  3. Mix the soaked bread with the melted fat and butter, stirring until it loosens from the saucepan.

  4. Cool slightly, then add mace, nutmeg, lemon rind, cinnamon, and salt.

  5. Incorporate several well-beaten eggs and finely cut dried fruit, mixing well.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the mixture for 1 to 1½ hours.

  2. Serve with lettuce and fruit sauce, or substitute with chopped parsley, onions, and pepper, serving 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and absorbs liquid as it soaks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give a firm, sliceable texture.
Fat
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding tender.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps keep the crumb moist.
Dried fruit
Adds sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture gently for the full time. Eggs set through gentle, steady heat. Cooking too fast or too briefly can leave the pudding watery or undercooked in the centre, while steady steam sets it evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, nutmeg, lemon, cinnamon, 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.

More bread pudding recipes

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

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