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Savoury Pudding From Fragments of Bread and Scraps of Cold Meat

A savory pudding made from stale bread, milk, eggs, butter, herbs, and cold meat, simmered and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Savoury Pudding From Fragments of Bread and Scraps of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Collect pieces of stale bread and select the crumb.

  2. Soak the bread in warm milk until softened, then strain off the milk.

  3. Beat the yolk of an egg and mix it with the soaked bread and butter.

  4. Place the mixture in a saucepan and boil until it becomes stiff.

  5. Let it cool.

Make the pudding

  1. Add chopped parsley, thyme, pepper, salt, and beaten eggs to the mixture.

  2. Mince the cold meat and combine it with the mixture.

  3. Boil in a basin for three hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy poured over it.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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 the milk to hold its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving the pudding its firm structure.
Warm milk
Softens the bread so it blends evenly and keeps the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Cold meat
Provides the main savory filling, adding flavor and substance to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil until stiff, then cool. Heating the bread mixture thickens it before the eggs are added. Adding eggs to a very hot mixture can scramble them, so cooling first keeps the eggs smooth and the texture even.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Thymethe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, butter, parsley, pepper, meat. 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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