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Dessert

Cabinet or Boiled Bread-and-butter Pudding, Plain

A boiled pudding made with bread, butter, raisins, eggs, milk, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Cabinet or Boiled Bread-and-butter Pudding, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding basin and line the bottom with a layer of stoned raisins.

  2. Fill the basin with slices of bread and butter.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, then add the milk, sugar, and grated nutmeg. Mix well.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the bread and butter, ensuring the basin is nearly full.

  3. Let it stand for 30 minutes, then tie a floured cloth over the top.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in water for 1 hour, then serve with sweet sauce.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and body.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and sets during cooking.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and forms the soft, layered body of the pudding.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture in the bottom layer.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the bread tender and flavourful.

The step that matters

Let it stand for 30 minutes before boiling. Standing lets the bread soak up the egg and milk mixture, so the custard distributes evenly and the pudding sets uniformly rather than leaving dry or soggy pockets.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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