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Dessert

Bread Pudding, Boiled

A boiled bread pudding made with stale bread, raisins, suet, sugar, citrus peel, egg, milk, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Bread Pudding, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Break the bread into small pieces.

  2. Cover with cold water and soak for 1 hour.

  3. Strain and squeeze dry.

  4. Beat out any lumps with a fork.

Mix and bake

  1. Add raisins, suet, sugar, peel, and nutmeg, and mix well.

  2. Beat the egg, add the milk, and stir into the mixture.

  3. Pour into a greased basin.

  4. Steam or boil for 2 hours.

  5. Serve with a sweet sauce, if desired.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the liquid to set a soft crumb.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it cooks.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Milk
Moistens the bread and helps the mixture cook into a soft, set texture.
Raisins or currants
Add sweetness, chewiness, and fruity flavour throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Squeezing the bread dry after soaking. Bread soaked in cold water holds a lot of liquid. If it is not squeezed well, the extra water dilutes the custard-like mixture, so the pudding may turn out wet and fail to set firmly when steamed.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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