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Dessert

Old English Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from stale bread, raisins, currants, citron, eggs, sugar, and spices, boiled in a sack.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Old English Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread in cold water for 15 minutes, then squeeze it dry.

Mix

  1. Mix the eggs with the bread, then add the sugar and the floured fruit.

  2. Season with cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

  3. Place the mixture in a securely tied sack.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the sack in water for 3 hours.

  2. Serve hot with 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.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the egg and sugar mixture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Currants
Add small pockets of tart, chewy fruit flavour and moisture.

The step that matters

Securely tie the sack. If the sack is not tightly sealed, boiling water can seep in and make the pudding soggy and waterlogged. A firm, well-closed sack keeps the pudding dense and moist while it cooks.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, egg, sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, egg, sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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