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Dessert

Brown Bread Pudding.

A pudding made from stale brown bread, suet, currants, sugar, nutmeg, lime rind, eggs, and brandy, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Brown Bread Pudding.

Why it works: Nutmeg and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brown Bread Pudding.

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. Mix the stale brown bread, suet, currants, salt, sugar, nutmeg, lime rind, and eggs thoroughly.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the mixture in a cloth for 3.5 hours.

  2. Serve with wine 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.

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 + limetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable pudding when cooked.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Stale brown bread
Provides the body and structure that holds the pudding together.
Currants
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the suet and eggs.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture in a cloth for 3.5 hours. A long, steady boil cooks the eggs through so the pudding sets rather than staying wet. Cooking it gently over this long period lets the suet and bread soften evenly without the outside drying out.

Swap the lime

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, currant, sugar, nutmeg, egg, brandy. 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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