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Dessert

A Years Cookery

A steamed bread pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, crushed ratafias, sugar, candied peel, suet, lemon rind, salt, baking powder, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 11,363 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Soak the crumbs

  1. Combine half the bread crumbs with boiling milk.

  2. Cover with a plate and let soak.

Mix the batter

  1. Add the remaining bread crumbs, crushed ratafias, sugar, candied peel, suet, lemon rind, salt, and baking powder. Mix well.

  2. Incorporate the eggs one at a time, stirring thoroughly after each addition.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Cover with buttered paper.

  3. Steam for 2 hours.

  4. Let the pudding stand for a minute.

  5. Carefully turn it out and serve with sweet 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Bread + milktop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together22,584 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together19,048 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together88,465 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soaked in hot milk, they form the body of the pudding and absorb the liquid.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give the pudding its firm structure.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the pudding rise and lighten as it steams.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Incorporating the eggs. Adding eggs one at a time and stirring thoroughly after each keeps the batter evenly emulsified and prevents curdling or lumps, so the pudding sets smoothly and evenly during steaming.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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