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Savoury Bread Pudding

A baked dish of fried bread, onions, haricot beans, ketchup, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,242 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Savoury Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the bread and onions separately.

Assemble and boil

  1. In a pudding basin, layer the fried bread, onions, and a few haricot beans.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of ketchup between the layers.

  3. Cover the mixture with pastry.

  4. Boil for 1 hour or more.

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. Onion + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Bread + beanstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together332 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + ketchuptop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + ketchuptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together813 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Wholemeal bread
Forms the bulk and structure of the pudding, soaking up the filling's moisture.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and depth of flavour when fried until golden.
Haricot beans
Add body and a soft, starchy texture to the filling.
Ketchup
Adds acidity and sweetness that season the layers.
Pastry
Covers the filling and helps hold moisture in during boiling.

The step that matters

Fry the bread and onions separately. Frying in separate batches stops the pan from crowding, so the bread and onions brown rather than steam.

“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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