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Dessert

Viennoise Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with stale bread, raisins, peel, sugar, milk, eggs, and caramelized sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Viennoise Pudding

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Viennoise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine 1 oz of sugar and 1 teaspoon of water in an iron saucepan and heat until the sugar melts and turns dark brown.

  2. Pour the milk into the caramel and let it sit to color.

Assemble and steam

  1. Mix the bread, raisins, peel, and sugar in a basin or the mold you will use for cooking.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the caramelized milk until the mixture is a deep coffee color.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the bread mixture and let it soak well.

  4. If using sherry, add it to the mixture and include an additional 1 oz of bread.

  5. Grease a mold and steam the pudding until firm, about 1 hour (or about 30 minutes if using small timbale molds).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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 soaks up the custard so it sets firm.
Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and set during steaming to give the pudding its firm structure.
Milk
Carries the caramel flavour and colour and moistens the bread to form the custard.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its soft, moist texture.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy sweetness and fruit flavour through the pudding.

The step that matters

Caramelising the sugar. Sugar heated past melting darkens quickly and can scorch, turning bitter. Stop when it is dark brown, then add the milk carefully, since hot caramel can spatter and seize.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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