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Dessert

Brown-bread Pudding, a LA Gotha

A baked pudding made with brown bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, whipped cream, lemon rind, cinnamon, cherries, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brown-bread Pudding, a LA Gotha

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the bread crumbs, sugar, egg yolks, whipped cream, lemon rind, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Fold in the whipped egg whites gently and set aside.

Layer and bake

  1. Butter a plain mold and sprinkle it with bread crumbs.

  2. Layer a spoonful of the mixture at the bottom, add a layer of cherries (stones left in), and repeat until the mold is filled.

  3. Place the mold on a baking sheet and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1 hour.

  4. Turn out the pudding and serve.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

Eggs
Whipped whites lift the pudding and help it set as it bakes.
Brown bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the liquid to give body.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pudding tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface.
Morello cherries
Add tart fruit flavour and moisture between the layers.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites trap air that gives the pudding its rise and light texture. Stirring or deflating them vigorously knocks out that air, leaving a denser result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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