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Boiled Puddings

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine milk, sugar, salt, bread crumbs, and eggs.

  2. Add nutmeg or grated lemon rind to taste.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix in butter and brandy.

  4. Combine both mixtures and stir well.

  5. If desired, fold in candied orange peel and currants.

Cook

  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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  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 into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the liquid and give the pudding its body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard base.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the eggs and milk.

Swap the lemon

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 about as well
  4. Lemonthe 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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Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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