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Madeira Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with Madeira, eggs, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and buttered mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Madeira Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into dice and place in a bowl with the castor sugar.

  2. Heat the milk and pour it over the beaten eggs, then add the sherry.

  3. Pour the mixture over the bread dice, mix well, and let it soak for 10 minutes.

  4. Butter a mold with clarified butter and pour the mixture into it.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Turn out and serve with custard 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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 pudding and help it set into a firm, sliceable custard as it steams.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard mixture.
Milk
Supplies liquid that soaks the bread and sets with the eggs into a soft custard.
Sherry
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour that balances the sweetness of the pudding.

The step that matters

Steam covered for the full time. Steam keeps the pudding moist and cooks the egg custard gently. Lifting the cover or letting the water boil too hard can leave the texture uneven or cause it to weep.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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