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Dessert

A Brown Bread Pudding

A pudding made from grated stale brown bread, suet, currants, sugar, nutmeg, candied peel, eggs, and brandy, boiled in a cloth.

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

Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

A Brown Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine the grated brown bread, chopped suet, currants, salt, sugar, grated nutmeg, candied peel, and beaten eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the brandy and mix the ingredients thoroughly.

  3. Place the mixture in a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 3½ hours.

  2. Serve with port 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.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Bread + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale brown bread
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up moisture and holding its shape.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the pudding rich and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and set as it cooks, giving the pudding structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the suet and brandy.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Place the mixture in a cloth. The cloth must be packed firmly and tied with room to swell, so the pudding holds its shape while boiling and does not fall apart or become waterlogged.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, nutmeg, egg, brandy. 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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