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Bread Pudding Boiled

A boiled bread pudding made with French rolls, milk, butter, lemon zest, nutmeg, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bread Pudding Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Place the diced French rolls in a basin and cover with boiling milk.

  2. Add the butter, lemon zest, nutmeg, and brandy.

  3. Once the mixture is well soaked, stir it with a wooden spoon.

  4. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

Boil the pudding

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered basin and cover with a cloth.

  2. Ensure the water is boiling before placing the pudding in.

  3. Boil for nearly 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.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

French rolls
Soak up the hot milk to form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture so the pudding stays tender.
Eggs
Set during boiling to bind the mixture into a custard-like pudding.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour that carries the lemon and nutmeg.

The step that matters

Ensure the water is boiling before placing the pudding in. Starting in water that is already boiling sets the outside quickly and helps the pudding cook evenly. Adding it to cooler water can leave the texture heavy and wet.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, nutmeg, brandy, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, nutmeg, brandy, 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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