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Dessert

Betsy Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale bread, suet, sugar, eggs, milk, and jam or stewed fruit.

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 ↓

Betsy Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the stale bread.

  2. Cover and let it stand for 30 minutes, then beat out the lumps with a fork.

  3. Add the suet, sugar, and well-beaten eggs, and mix well.

Layer and bake

  1. Place a layer of the mixture in a greased pie dish.

  2. Cover thickly with jam or stewed fruit, then add another layer of the mixture.

  3. Repeat until the dish is full, covering the last layer of jam or fruit thickly with the mixture.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour and serve hot.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaks up the hot milk to form the soft, custard-like body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the bread and milk mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides the liquid that gives the pudding its moisture.
Jam or stewed fruit
Provides sweetness and fruity moisture between the layers.

The step that matters

Beat out the lumps after soaking. Bread that is not fully softened and beaten smooth leaves dry pockets and uneven texture. Thorough beating breaks the bread into a uniform mixture that binds evenly with the eggs when baked.

“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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