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Dessert

Bread and Jam Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread, jam, eggs, milk, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread and Jam Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grease a round tin or basin that holds 1½ pints with sweet dripping or butter.

  2. Spread thin slices of bread with jam, then cut them into 1‑inch by 3‑inch slips.

  3. Place the bread slips in the greased mould, filling it nearly full.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then add sugar and milk, mixing well.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the mould and let it soak for 30 minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the mould with greased paper and place it in a saucepan with boiling water, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the mould.

  2. Steam for 1 hour, then turn out the pudding carefully.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.
Bread
Soaks up the egg and milk mixture to form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Moistens the bread and forms the liquid base of the custard.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour that permeates the soaked bread.

The step that matters

Steam with water halfway up the mould. Gentle, moist steam heats the custard evenly so it sets without drying or curdling. Keeping the water at a steady simmer, not a hard boil that could splash in, helps the pudding stay tender.

“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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