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Boiled Bread Pudding

A boiled pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, eggs, flour, butter, sugar, currants, almonds, and citrus peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pour scalding milk over bread crumbs and cover for 1 hour.

  2. Beat the eggs and strain them into the bread mixture.

  3. Add flour, butter, sugar, currants, beaten almonds, orange‑flower water, orange peel, lemon peel, and citron peel.

Boil and serve

  1. Butter a basin that will hold the mixture.

  2. Flour a cloth and tie it tightly over the basin.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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 firm when boiled.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk to form the body of the pudding.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a softer, moister crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps round out the fruit flavours.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly over the basin. A loose cloth lets water seep in during boiling, making the pudding soggy and diluting its shape. A snug, floured cloth keeps water out and lets the pudding set into a firm, cohesive mass.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, flour, butter, sugar, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, flour, butter, sugar, almond. 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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