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Dessert

Pudding

A sweet pudding made with gooseberries, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Whisk the eggs well.

  2. Combine the bread crumbs and eggs.

Bake

  1. Bake the mixture gently at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

Cook and strain the fruit

  1. In a separate pot, cook the gooseberries with sugar and water for 10 to 12 minutes.

  2. Strain the fruit through a sieve.

Finish

  1. Mix with crushed biscuits and double the butter for a finer pudding.

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

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

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, binding the bread crumbs into a firm, custard-like pudding.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding body and structure.
Green gooseberries
Provide tartness, aroma and moisture that balance the richness of the eggs.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and balances the sharpness of the gooseberries.

The step that matters

Bake the mixture gently. Egg proteins set into a smooth custard at moderate heat. Too much heat makes the eggs curdle and the pudding dry and grainy, so keep the oven gentle and check for doneness at the shorter end of the time.

“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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