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Madeira Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with eggs, milk, sherry, and diced bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Madeira Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into dice and place it in a bowl with the castor sugar.

  2. Heat the milk and pour it over the beaten eggs, then add the sherry.

Soak and steam

  1. Pour the mixture over the diced bread, mix well, and let it soak for 10 minutes.

  2. Grease a mold with clarified butter and pour the mixture into it.

  3. Cover with buttered paper and steam for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Turn out and serve with custard 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard so it holds together.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the pudding and giving it a firm, sliceable texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that moistens the bread and carries the custard set.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the bread absorb the liquid evenly.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine flavour that deepens the aroma of the pudding.
Lemon rind
Contributes bright citrus aroma that lifts the rich custard.

The step that matters

Steam gently for the full time. Eggs set as the custard heats; if the water boils too hard, the surface can turn porous or rough. Steady, moderate steam lets the custard set evenly and stay smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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