Skip to main content
Dessert

The Penny Pudding

A pudding made from a penny French roll, milk, sugar, and egg, boiled and served with sweet white wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The Penny Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the roll and sugar in cold milk for 1 hour.

  2. Beat the egg with the soaked roll, sugar, and milk until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into a half-pint shape or a cloth.

  2. Boil for 25 minutes if using a shape, or 20 minutes if using a cloth.

  3. Serve with sweet white 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.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Penny french roll
Soaks up the milk and softens into the pudding's body and texture.
Egg
Binds the soaked bread and milk, helping the pudding set as it cooks.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms a custard-like texture.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the flavour of the milk and egg.

The step that matters

Boil for the stated time in the chosen container. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the pudding turns firm and tender when cooked for the right length of time. Boiling too long can make it tough and rubbery, while too short a time leaves it runny in the centre. Shape and cloth need different times because their thickness and heat transfer differ.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes