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Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A sweet pudding made from milk, bread crumbs, butter, sugar, eggs, brandy, and lemon rind, boiled for over an hour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a large bowl, combine the milk, bread crumbs, butter, sugar, and eggs. Add the brandy and grated lemon rind, mixing well.

  2. If desired, fold in the candied peel and currants.

Cook

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

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. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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 into a firm, sliceable custard as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs to form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides liquid that the bread crumbs soak up and the eggs set within.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold. The cloth or mold must be sealed or filled with room to expand, so the pudding holds its shape and cooks through without water leaking in or the mixture bursting out during boiling.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, butter, sugar, egg, brandy, lemon):

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

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