Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A boiled pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, butter, sugar, eggs, brandy, lemon rind, optional candied orange peel, currants, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. In a large bowl, combine the milk, bread crumbs, butter, sugar, eggs, brandy, and grated lemon rind, and mix well until all ingredients are fully incorporated.

  2. If desired, add candied orange peel and currants for extra flavor.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding cloth or mold.

Boil and set

  1. Boil in water for 1 hour and 10 minutes 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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 when heated.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the liquid and give the pudding its body and soft texture.
Milk
Provides liquid that the bread crumbs soak up and the eggs set within.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to a soft texture.

The step that matters

Boil until set. Eggs set when heated, so the pudding needs enough time in gently simmering water to firm through. Boiling too hard or too briefly can leave it wobbly, cracked, or unevenly cooked.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, butter, sugar, egg, brandy, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, butter, sugar, egg, brandy, lemon. 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 boiled pudding recipes

Paste 5Plain 5 See all 71 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes