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Dessert

Viennoise Pudding

A steamed bread pudding made with stale bread, raisins, peel, sugar, milk, eggs, and caramelized sugar, optionally flavored with sherry.

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

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Viennoise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. In an iron saucepan, combine 1 oz of sugar and 1 teaspoon of water. Heat until the sugar melts and turns dark brown.

  2. Pour the milk into the caramel and let it stand to color.

Prepare the pudding

  1. In a basin, mix the bread, raisins, peel, and sugar together.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the caramelized milk until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture over the bread mixture and let it soak.

Steam and finish

  1. Grease a mold and steam the pudding until firm, about 1.5 hours. If using small molds, steam for 1 hour.

  2. If desired, add ½ glass of sherry and increase the bread by ½ oz.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Absorbs the custard mixture and gives the pudding its body as it soaks and sets.
Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and set the pudding firm when steamed.
Milk
Forms the custard that soaks the bread and provides moisture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, when melted to dark brown, gives the caramel its flavor and color.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture scattered through the soaked bread.

The step that matters

Heat the sugar until dark brown. Sugar melts and then darkens quickly, so it can burn and turn bitter if left unattended. Removing it at the right colour gives a rich caramel flavour without bitterness.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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