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Steamed Bread Pudding

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

  1. Steam the bread over a hot stove until it loosens from the saucepan.

  2. Cool slightly, then flavor with mace, nutmeg, lemon, cinnamon, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add several well-beaten eggs and finely cut dried fruit.

  4. Mix well and steam for 1 to 1.5 hours.

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

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

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, lemon, cinnamon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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