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Dessert

A Rich Bread Pudding with Plums and Currants

A bread pudding made with milk, spices, raisins, currants, and bread crumbs, boiled and served with wine or brandy butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Rich Bread Pudding with Plums and Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Simmer the milk with lemon peel, mace, cinnamon, nutmeg, and loaf sugar for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Strain the mixture into a basin and let it cool.

  3. Beat the eggs and strain them into the cooled milk mixture, then mix well.

Assemble and boil

  1. Add the raisins, currants, and bread crumbs, and mix everything together.

  2. Transfer the mixture into a buttered mold, tie a cloth over it tightly, and boil for 2.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter mixed with white wine or brandy and powdered sugar.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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 as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the custard and give the pudding its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that sets around the crumbs and fruit.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding in a tightly tied mold. The cloth must be tied snugly so water cannot enter, and the pot must keep a steady gentle boil. Water seeping in makes the pudding soggy, while uneven heat can leave the custard undercooked in the centre.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, egg, raisin. 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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