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Dessert

Brown Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from crumbled brown bread, suet, sugar, raisins, sultanas, eggs, milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Brown Bread Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brown Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

  2. Beat the eggs thoroughly and stir them into the dry mixture.

  3. Add milk until all the ingredients are moistened.

  4. Cover the mixture and let stand for at least 1 hour to allow the bread to soak.

Steam and serve

  1. Prepare a well-greased mold or basin.

  2. Beat the mixture again, adding more milk if necessary.

  3. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  4. Steam or boil for 3 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Brown bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the liquid as it rests.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sultanas
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its flavour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand before cooking. Resting for at least an hour lets the bread absorb the milk and eggs fully. Without this soaking, the bread stays dry in patches and the pudding sets unevenly.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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