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Dessert

Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, candied peel, suet, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Place half of the bread crumbs in a bowl and pour boiling milk over them.

  2. Cover with a plate and let soak for a while.

Mix and fill

  1. Add the remaining bread crumbs, crushed ratafias, sugar, candied peel, suet, lemon rind, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring well after each addition.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and cover with buttered paper.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. Let the pudding stand for a minute or two, then turn it out carefully and serve with sweet sauce.

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 + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give structure.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the pudding moist and tender.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds a little moisture and flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the pudding and help it rise.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. The mold must be sealed and the water kept at a steady simmer for the full time. If steam escapes or the water drops, the pudding can turn out dense, wet, or unevenly cooked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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