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Preserve

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with milk, sugar, bread crumbs, eggs, butter, brandy, and optional currants or candied orange peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine milk, sugar, salt, bread crumbs, and eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add nutmeg or lemon rind and mix well.

  3. Stir in butter and brandy until fully incorporated.

  4. Fold in currants and candied orange peel if desired.

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

  2. Boil for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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 firm when boiled.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body that soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its structure.
Milk
Supplies moisture and, with the eggs, forms a soft custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, fatty mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savory richness of the eggs and butter.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Eggs set as they heat, so the pudding must boil gently and steadily for the full time to cook through. Too little time leaves it wet and loose; a hard boil can make the cloth or mold pull away or the texture become rubbery.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, bread, egg, nutmeg, butter, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, bread, egg, nutmeg, butter, 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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