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Dessert

Pudding

A bread pudding made with gooseberries, eggs, breadcrumbs, biscuits, butter, sugar, and water.

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 ↓

Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Combine the bread crumbs and whisked eggs in a bowl.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake gently for 30 to 45 minutes.

Prepare the gooseberries

  1. For a finer pudding, work the fruit through a sieve and mix with crushed Naples biscuits and double the butter.

  2. In a saucepan, cook the gooseberries with sugar and water for 10 to 12 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. Bread + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  4. Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, binding the crumbs into a sliceable, custard-like pudding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the egg and fruit liquid, giving the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, tender crumb.
Gooseberries
Provide tartness, flavor and moisture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the gooseberries and balances their sharp acidity.

The step that matters

Bake gently. Egg proteins set at moderate heat to give a smooth, tender pudding. Too much heat makes the eggs curdle and weep liquid, leaving the texture grainy and watery.

“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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