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Dessert

Viennoise Pudding

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

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

Viennoise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel milk

  1. In an old saucepan, add the lump sugar and burn it to a dark brown.

  2. Pour in the milk and stir until well-colored and the sugar is dissolved.

Mix and soak

  1. Beat the eggs well, then strain the colored milk onto them and add the sherry.

  2. In a basin, combine all the dry ingredients and pour the egg, milk, and sherry mixture over them.

  3. Let the pudding soak for 30 minutes.

Steam

  1. Transfer the mixture into a well-greased pint mold.

  2. Cover with buttered paper and steam for 1.5 hours.

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

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

  3. Sherry + milktop 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

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard liquid.
Eggs
Set during steaming to bind the pudding and give it a firm, sliceable structure.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and chewy texture scattered through the pudding.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds moisture as it dissolves into the liquid.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the bread and sets with the eggs.

The step that matters

Burning the lump sugar to a dark brown. Sugar that is only lightly browned gives little colour and flavour, while overly burnt sugar turns bitter. Heating it until dark brown but not black gives the pudding its rich colour and deep caramel taste, so stop at the right moment and watch closely.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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