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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) · 13 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 pudding

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

  2. Mash the mixture well and add the sugar, egg yolks, and ground allspice. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Before placing in the oven, fold in the raisins that have been dusted with flour.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites with a little sugar until stiff peaks form, then spread over the pudding.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until the meringue is light brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine the sifted flour, butter, sugar, and a pinch of spice in a saucepan.

  2. Cook and stir until the sauce thickens, then serve 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.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard-like base and help bind it during baking.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form the light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides the liquid that makes the pudding moist.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue whip and brown.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped until stiff so the meringue holds its shape and bakes into a light, airy topping. Under-whipped whites will collapse and make the topping heavy.

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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