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Dessert

White Pot

A bread pudding made with sliced bread, marrow, cream, eggs, and spices, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

White Pot

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard

  1. Season 1 quart of cream or new milk with nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Boil the seasoned cream.

  3. Strain the boiled cream.

  4. Beat 6 egg yolks, then mix the beaten yolks into the cream.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer sliced bread in the bottom of a dish.

  2. Cover the bread with marrow.

  3. Pour the cream mixture over the bread.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Finish and serve

  1. Sift sugar over the pudding.

  2. Sprinkle with rasped almonds, citron, and orange peel before serving.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the base layer that soaks up the custard and gives the pudding its body.
Cream or new milk
Provides the liquid and richness that soak into the bread and set into custard.
Egg yolks
Set the custard when baked, giving it a smooth, tender texture.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat that enrich the custard and bread layer.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overbaking makes the custard grainy and watery. Bake only until the centre just wobbles and stops sloshing.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cream, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, sugar, egg):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, 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.

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