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Dessert

Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, molasses, water, flour, raisins, butter, and baking soda, topped with a sugar‑butter‑egg sauce.

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 ↓

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine bread crumbs, molasses, water, flour, raisins, butter, and baking soda in a bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.

  3. Steam for 2 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, beat together sugar, butter, and egg in a saucepan.

  2. Cook slowly on the back of the stove for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 crumbs
Provides the bulk and body that hold the pudding together.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark color to the pudding.
Flour
Adds structure that sets the pudding as it steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to help the pudding rise and lighten.
Egg
Binds and thickens the sauce as it cooks gently.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for flavor and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce slowly. Egg proteins thicken gently with low, steady heat and stirring. Too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the egg and leave lumps in the sauce.

“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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