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Dessert

Bread Pudding Boiled

A boiled pudding made from French rolls, milk, butter, lemon rind, sugar, eggs, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bread Pudding Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Pour boiling milk over the bread squares to cover them.

  2. Add butter, lemon rind, and sugar; let sit by the stove until the bread absorbs the milk.

  3. Work the mixture with a wooden spoon; add more milk if too thick.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix them into the bread mixture along with nutmeg.

  2. Grease a basin with butter and pour in the pudding mixture.

Boil and serve

  1. Ensure the water is boiling before adding the pudding.

  2. Tie the basin tightly and boil for 2 hours.

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

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

  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

French rolls
Absorb the milk and form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during boiling to give the pudding structure.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture to the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture.

The step that matters

Ensure the water is boiling before adding the pudding. Starting the basin in water that is already boiling gives steady, even heat from the outset, so the pudding cooks through and sets evenly rather than becoming soggy or dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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