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Dessert

Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, currants or raisins, sugar, milk, pine nuts or Brazil nuts, egg, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pine and ginger share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a basin, combine the bread crumbs, sugar, chopped pine nuts or grated Brazil nut, and currants or raisins.

  2. Boil the milk and pour it over the mixture, then beat with a fork.

  3. Beat the egg and add it along with the ground ginger.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for one and a half hours.

  2. 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pine + gingertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the milk and egg to set a soft body.
Egg
Binds the mixture so it holds together and sets as it steams.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs so they soften and hold the batter together.
Currants or raisins
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full time. Steam gently and keep the water topped up so the pudding cooks through evenly. Steaming heats the mixture slowly, so the egg sets and the crumbs firm without drying out at the edges.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, milk, pine, egg, ginger. 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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