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Dessert

To Make a Christmas Pudding

A steamed or baked pudding made from stale bread, mince-pie meat, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

To Make a Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Layer

  1. Cut the crust off the stale bread and layer it in the bottom of a baking dish.

  2. Spread a layer of mince-pie meat over the bread.

  3. Continue layering with more bread and mince-meat until the dish is full.

  4. Pour milk mixed with beaten eggs over the layers until the bread is saturated.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1.5 hours.

  2. Optionally, place a paste around the dish.

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 + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the structure and soaks up the milk and egg mixture.
Mince-pie meat
Adds sweetness and rich flavour between the bread layers.
Eggs
Set on heating to bind the layers into a firm, sliceable custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid that moistens the bread and forms the custard.

The step that matters

Saturating the bread. The milk and egg mixture must soak through all the layers. Dry pockets stay bread-like and uneven, while the egg proteins set as the custard heats, binding the layers together.

“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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