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Dessert

Viennese Pudding

A steamed bread pudding with candied peel, sultanas, lemon rind, sherry, and a sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Viennese Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into small dice.

  2. Shred the candied peel and pick the sultanas.

  3. Combine the bread, candied peel, sultanas, lemon rind, and castor sugar in a greased pudding basin.

Make the custard

  1. In a pan, burn the loaf sugar until light brown, then add the milk and stir until dissolved.

  2. Pour the milk mixture into the whisked egg yolks and strain over the bread mixture in the basin.

  3. Add the sherry and allow to soak for a while.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1.5 hours, then turn out and serve with sherry 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 + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the milk and sherry to create a soft body.
Egg yolks
Set during steaming to bind the pudding and enrich its texture.
Milk
Moistens the bread and egg mixture, helping the pudding cook to a tender texture.
Sultanas
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the finished pudding.
Loaf sugar
Burned to light brown, adding caramel flavour and colour to the milk.

The step that matters

Burning the loaf sugar. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to colour, so it should be taken only to light brown and then combined with the milk. Going further makes the flavour bitter and harsh.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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