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Dessert

German Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, jam, and lemon essence.

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

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 ↓

German Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Place bread crumbs in a bowl and pour boiling milk over them.

  2. Cover with a plate and let stand for five minutes.

  3. Add butter. Beat with a fork.

  4. Stir in sugar.

  5. Beat eggs well. Add eggs along with the essence of lemon. Mix everything thoroughly.

Layer and steam

  1. Grease a pudding basin.

  2. Sprinkle sugar inside the basin.

  3. Pour in part of the mixture. Add a dessert spoonful of jam.

  4. Add more mixture. Add a spoonful of jam.

  5. Finish with the mixture on top.

  6. Cover with buttered paper.

  7. Steam for forty-five 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.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 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

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the hot milk to create a soft body.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give the pudding structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender texture.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly.

The step that matters

Covering with buttered paper before steaming. The paper keeps steam and condensation from soaking the top layer and lets the pudding cook gently, so it stays moist rather than soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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