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A Brown Bread Pudding

A pudding made from stale brown bread, suet, currants, sugar, nutmeg, candied peel, eggs, and brandy, boiled in a cloth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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A Brown Bread Pudding

Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

A Brown Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the pudding

  1. Mix the bread, suet, currants, salt, sugar, nutmeg, candied peel, and eggs thoroughly.

  2. Add the brandy and mix well.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil the pudding in a cloth for 3.5 hours.

  2. Serve with port wine sauce.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale brown bread
Provides the main body and structure, soaking up moisture to hold the pudding together.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as they heat, giving the pudding its firm texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the suet and fruit.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit throughout the pudding.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that comes through during cooking.

The step that matters

Boiling in a cloth for 3.5 hours. The pudding needs a steady simmer with water covering it the whole time. If the water drops or boils hard, the pudding cooks unevenly and can turn dense or dry, since the eggs and bread set gradually with gentle, even heat.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, nutmeg, egg, brandy. 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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