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Dessert

Hot Puddings and Souffles

A steamed bread pudding made with bread, candied peel, lemon rind, sultanas, sugar, milk, cream, sherry, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Hot Puddings and Souffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the bread, candied peel, lemon rind, sultanas, and castor sugar in a basin.

  2. Burn the loaf sugar in a saucepan until dark brown.

  3. Add milk to the browned sugar to dissolve it.

  4. Whisk the egg yolks.

Make the pudding

  1. Strain the milk mixture over the dry ingredients in the basin.

  2. Add the cream and sherry to the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a well-greased mold.

  4. Steam the pudding in a saucepan for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Sherry + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Set the custard and add richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Bread
Absorbs the liquid and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the moisture that the bread soaks up and that the eggs set in.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, softer texture.
Loaf sugar
Browned to a dark caramel, giving colour and a deep, bittersweet flavour.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a warm, fruity flavour.

The step that matters

Burning the loaf sugar until dark brown. Sugar caramelises as it darkens, giving colour and flavour. Taken too far it turns bitter and burnt, and it may not dissolve evenly into the milk. Stop when it is dark brown but not black.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, cream, sherry, bread, sugar. 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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