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Dessert

Newmarket Pudding

A custard-based bread pudding with currants, butter, and spices.

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

Newmarket Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with lemon peel, cinnamon, and bay leaf for 5-10 minutes.

  2. Sweeten the milk with loaf sugar.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and whites together in a bowl.

  4. Add the milk to the eggs and mix well.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer thinly sliced bread, butter, and currants in a pie dish.

  2. Pour the custard over the layers.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites set the custard, giving it a tender, sliceable structure as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs set into a soft, creamy custard.
Bread
Soaks up the custard so the layers hold moisture and form a pudding rather than a pour-over.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to flavour and a softer texture in the layers.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the milk, balancing the eggs and warm spices in the custard.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a fine sieve. Straining removes egg strands and any bits of cooked skin, so the custard bakes smooth and even rather than grainy or lumpy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, sugar, egg, bread, butter. 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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