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Dessert

Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from soaked bread, suet, currants, sugar, egg, milk, nutmeg, and salt.

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

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak the bread scraps in cold water until soft, then drain and squeeze out as much water as possible.

  2. Beat the soaked bread with a fork, then add the suet, cleaned currants, salt, nutmeg, and sugar.

Mix and steam

  1. Mix in the beaten egg and milk until well combined.

  2. Turn the mixture into a greased basin, cover with greased paper, and steam for 1 hour.

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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Scraps of bread
Provides the bulk of the pudding and absorbs the milk and egg as it steams.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it cooks.
Refined suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Milk
Adds moisture that softens the bread and helps form a soft crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the flavour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the soaked bread. Excess water left in the bread dilutes the custard-like mixture and can make the pudding soggy and loose. Squeezing it well lets the milk and egg set the crumb properly as it steams.

Swap the currant

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

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

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