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Steamed Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from bread crumbs, raisins, flour, butter, egg, baking soda, spices, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Steamed Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter and stir it into the bread crumbs.

  2. Add the beaten egg, spices, and baking soda dissolved in sweet milk.

  3. Dredge the raisins with flour and stir them into the batter.

  4. If the batter is too stiff, add more milk until it reaches the consistency of corn bread.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with 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. 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb liquid to set the body of the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter so the pudding holds its shape after steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the milk to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Coats the raisins so they stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the crumbs and dissolves the baking soda, giving the batter its moisture.

The step that matters

Adjusting the batter consistency. If the batter is too stiff, the crumbs will not hydrate fully and the pudding can turn dense. Adding milk until it resembles corn bread gives even moisture and a light texture after steaming.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, butter, egg, milk. 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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