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Dessert

Sweet Manchester Pudding

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

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

Sweet Manchester Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and layer

  1. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, milk, butter, and lemon flavoring.

  2. Layer bread crumbs and jam in a baking dish, alternating until full. Finish with a layer of bread crumbs on top.

  3. Pour the custard mixture over the layers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until set and golden.

  2. Serve warm with cream.

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. 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

Eggs
Set the custard so it holds together when baked and sliced.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the milk to give body.
Milk
Provides the liquid that, with the eggs, forms the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor between the crumb layers.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the custard runny and overbaking makes it dry and rubbery. Look for a firm center and a golden top.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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