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Dessert

Spice Pudding

A sweet bread pudding with raisins, allspice, and a meringue topping, finished with a spiced sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spice 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 the base

  1. Soak the bread, crackers, or biscuits in milk for 1-2 hours until soft.

  2. Mash the soaked mixture finely.

  3. Add sugar, egg yolks, and allspice. Beat well.

  4. Fold in the floured raisins just before placing in the oven.

Top and bake

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pudding and bake at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, cook flour, butter, sugar, and a pinch of spice in a saucepan, stirring until slightly thickened.

  2. Serve the sauce hot with the pudding.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Allspice + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread, crackers, or biscuits
Soaked in milk and mashed, they form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread so it mashes into a moist, tender base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help bind it into a set, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff to form a light meringue that browns on top.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue brown in the oven.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness; flouring helps keep them suspended in the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Stiff egg whites trap air that gives the meringue its volume and light texture. Underbeaten whites collapse and make the topping dense, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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