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Dessert

A Baked Bread Pudding

A baked bread pudding made with bread crumbs, flour, eggs, ginger, raisins, currants, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Baked Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the bread crumb, flour, ginger, salt, and sugar to taste.

  2. Add the egg yolks and whites, then enough milk to create a good batter.

  3. Fold in the raisins and currants.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking dish, pour in the mixture, and bake until set.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumb
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk and eggs.
Egg yolks and whites
Bind the batter and set into a custard-like structure as the pudding bakes.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the pudding holds its shape rather than turning watery.
Milk
Hydrates the crumb and eggs, giving the batter its moisture and a soft texture.
Raisins and currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the pudding is done when the centre firms. Underbaking leaves it loose and wet, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, raisin, currant, milk, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, raisin, currant, milk, butter. 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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