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Dessert

Crumb Pudding

A baked pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, raisins, nutmeg, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin 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 ↓

Crumb Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Add the milk, nutmeg, and raisins to the egg.

  3. Mix the bread crumbs, sugar, and baking powder in a separate bowl, then add to the egg mixture.

Bake

  1. Place the baking dish in a larger pan filled with water to keep the pudding soft while baking.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 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

Egg
Beaten egg binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the pudding.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk of the pudding, absorbing the milk to form a soft, tender body.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that moistens the crumbs and gives the pudding its custard-like softness.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter and helps the pudding rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Place the baking dish in a larger pan of water. The water bath surrounds the dish with gentle, even heat, so the pudding cooks slowly and stays moist instead of drying out or becoming rubbery at the edges.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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