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Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made with stale bread, beef suet, jam, milk, sugar, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

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 ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Cut thin slices of light stale bread and line the sides of a basin, placing a round slice at the bottom.

  2. Layer shredded beef suet and a spoonful of jam between rounds of bread until the basin is full, finishing with a round of bread on top.

Make the custard and steam

  1. Boil ½ pint of milk with 1 ounce of sugar, then pour it over a lightly beaten egg.

  2. Slowly add the milk mixture to the pudding.

  3. Cover with a paper cap and steam for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Raspberry + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

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

  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

Light stale bread
Forms the structure and soaks up the custard as the pudding sets.
Beef suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the layers moist.
Egg
Sets the milk mixture into a custard that holds the pudding together.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard.

The step that matters

Slowly add the milk mixture to the pudding.. Pouring the hot milk slowly lets the bread absorb it evenly, so the pudding does not become soggy in spots or leave dry pockets.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, beef, 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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