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Dessert

Windsor Pudding

A steamed bread pudding with raisins, currants, candied peel, buttered bread, eggs, milk, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Windsor Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a quart pudding mold and stick some seeded raisins and strips of candied peel in regular rows on the inside.

  2. Cut the remaining raisins into small pieces and clean the currants.

Assemble and steam

  1. Layer slices of bread and butter in the mold, sprinkling over some raisins and currants, and grating a little nutmeg between layers until nearly full.

  2. Beat the eggs, then add the sugar and milk, and pour this mixture over the bread.

  3. Let the pudding soak for an hour, cover with greased paper, and steam for 1.5 hours.

  4. 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the bread into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk and egg mixture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the bread and forms the custard with the eggs.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add small pockets of chewy sweetness and fruitiness through the layers.

The step that matters

Soaking before steaming. Letting the bread soak for an hour allows the egg and milk mixture to fully penetrate it. Without this, the pudding may steam unevenly, with dry pockets and a loose, uncustard-like texture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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