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Dessert

Swiss Pudding

A steamed pudding made with bread crumbs, sugar, coconut, preserved fruit, beef marrow or suet, milk, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Swiss Pudding

Why it works: Bread and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,032 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Swiss Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine bread crumbs, loaf sugar, grated coconut, preserved fruit, beef marrow or suet, coconut milk or fresh milk, and beaten eggs in a bowl.

  2. Beat the mixture well and let it stand for 1 hour.

  3. Butter a basin and beat the mixture again for 10 minutes.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the basin and tie a cloth over it.

  2. Plunge the basin into fast-boiling water and boil rapidly for 3.5 hours.

  3. Carefully turn out the pudding and serve.

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

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Coconut + beeftop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

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

  4. Bread + coconuttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help give the pudding its set structure as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Provide the body of the pudding, soaking up liquid to form a soft, cohesive crumb.
Beef marrow or suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the pudding moist.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly for the full time. The basin must stay submerged in fast-boiling water for the whole 3.5 hours. Water that drops below a steady boil cooks the pudding unevenly and can leave it heavy or underset, so the water level and heat need checking throughout.

Swap the coconut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, beef, 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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