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Dessert

Bread Pudding Boiled

A boiled bread pudding made with French rolls, milk, butter, lemon rind, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and served with white wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bread Pudding Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Pour boiling milk over the bread squares until covered.

  2. Add a small piece of butter, lemon rind, and sugar; let sit by the stove until the bread absorbs the milk.

  3. Mix the bread with a wooden spoon; add more milk if too thick.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix them into the bread along with grated nutmeg.

  2. Grease a basin with butter, pour in the pudding mixture, and tie it tightly.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil for 2 hours, ensuring the water is boiling before adding the pudding.

  2. Serve with white 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.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

French rolls
Provide the bread base that soaks up the milk and sets into a soft, tender body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Soaks the bread and adds moisture so the pudding stays soft rather than dry.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the bread mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savoury richness of the eggs and butter.

The step that matters

Start boiling before adding the pudding. Placing the tied basin into water that is already boiling gives an even, steady heat from the start. Water that is still heating can make the pudding cook unevenly and turn heavy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

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