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Dessert

Viennoise Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with stale bread, sherry, milk, raisins, candied peel, lemon rind, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Viennoise Pudding

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Viennoise Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak the bread pieces in sherry and milk (or milk and cream) until softened.

  2. Beat the soaked bread with a fork until well mixed.

  3. Add sultana raisins, moist sugar, candied peel, and lemon rind; mix thoroughly.

  4. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 1 to 4 eggs and add to the mixture.

  5. If using 1 or 2 eggs, stir in 1 teaspoon of flour to bind the pudding.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered mold and cover with buttered paper.

  2. Steam for 1.5 hours until firm in the center.

  3. Let it stand for 1 minute before turning out.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaks up the milk and sherry to form the body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help the pudding set firm when steamed.
Milk
Moistens the bread and forms a custard-like base with the yolks.
Flour
Binds the pudding so it holds its shape when turned out.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming until firm in the center. Steam gently and check the center: egg proteins set as the pudding heats, so underdone centers stay loose, while overcooking makes the texture dense and rubbery.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sherry, milk, raisin, sugar, egg, flour. 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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