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Dessert

Bread Pudding, Boiled

A boiled pudding made from stale bread, raisins, suet, sugar, candied peel, egg, milk, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Bread Pudding, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Break the bread into small pieces and cover with cold water. Soak for 1 hour, then strain and squeeze dry.

  2. Beat out all the lumps with a fork, then add the raisins, suet, sugar, peel, and nutmeg. Mix well.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the egg, add the milk, and stir into the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Put the mixture into a greased basin and steam or boil for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with a sweet sauce, if desired.

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 + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up liquid to give a soft, moist crumb.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, moist texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps it set as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture that softens the bread and keeps the pudding from drying out.
Raisins or currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds to its soft, moist texture.

The step that matters

Squeezing the soaked bread dry. Bread soaked in water holds a lot of liquid. Squeezing it well removes the excess so the pudding does not turn soggy or heavy when it steams.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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