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Dessert

An Excellent Small Mincemeat Pudding

A boiled pudding made from bread crumbs, mincemeat, eggs, and brandy, served with a butter‑wine‑lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

An Excellent Small Mincemeat Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in boiling milk until well soaked.

  2. Once nearly cold, drain excess milk from the bread crumbs.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Mix the soaked bread crumbs with mincemeat, brandy, and beaten eggs.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered basin, filling it completely.

  3. Boil the pudding for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with a sauce made from melted butter, white wine, brandy, lemon juice, and sugar to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

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

  4. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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 set it into a firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding a soft, tender body.
Mincemeat
Provides the main fruit, spice, and sweetness of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs so they blend evenly into the mixture.

The step that matters

Drain the bread crumbs after soaking. Excess milk left in the crumbs thins the mixture and can make the cooked pudding wet and loose. Draining it while the crumbs are nearly cold keeps the texture firm enough to hold its shape.

“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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