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Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from grated bread soaked in boiling milk, eggs, and spices, then boiled and served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pour boiling milk over grated bread and cover.

  2. Let the mixture soak for 1–2 hours.

  3. Beat the soaked mixture until fine, then mix in the beaten eggs.

Cook and serve

  1. Butter a bowl that will hold the mixture and tie a floured cloth over it.

  2. Boil in water for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with melted butter poured over it.

  4. It can be enjoyed with salt or sugar.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable pudding when cooked.
White bread
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up the milk to form a soft, absorbent base.
Milk
Softens the grated bread and adds moisture to the pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pockets throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, flavorful pudding.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and gives the pudding a firmer structure.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding in the floured cloth. The cloth must be tied securely and the pudding kept gently simmering in water, because a loose cloth lets water seep in and a hard boil can break up the soft, egg-set texture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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