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Dessert

A Rich Bread Pudding with Plums and Currants

A sweet bread pudding made with milk, spices, raisins, currants, and bread crumbs, served with a butter‑wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

A Rich Bread Pudding with Plums and Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Simmer the milk with lemon peel, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, and loaf sugar for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Strain the mixture into a basin and let it cool.

  3. Beat the eggs and strain them into the cooled milk mixture, then mix well.

Assemble and boil

  1. Add the raisins, currants, and bread crumbs, then mix everything together.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and tie a cloth over it tightly.

  3. Boil the pudding for 2.5 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt butter with white wine or brandy.

  2. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the melted butter sauce.

  3. Serve the pudding with the 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.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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 help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding as it cooks.
White bread crumbs
Absorb the custard and form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that the bread soaks up and that the eggs set within.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, chewy bursts of fruit flavour and texture throughout the pudding.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smooth, glossy mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil the pudding for 2.5 hours. The mold must stay submerged in gently boiling water for the full time. Eggs set gradually with steady heat; too little heat or a loose cloth can leave the pudding wet or let water into it.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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