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Boiled Bread Pudding

A boiled pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, eggs, currants, candied peel, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs and powdered sugar in a bowl.

  2. Heat the milk until hot, then pour it over the bread mixture.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then add the currants, candied peel, and eggs.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for 2 hours or steam for 3 hours.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the hot milk to set a soft structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and adds moisture to the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the soaked crumbs.
Currants
Add sweet, chewy bursts of fruit through the pudding.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the eggs. If the milk-soaked mixture is still very hot when the eggs go in, the eggs can scramble, which leaves lumps and uneven setting. Letting it cool slightly keeps the custard-like texture smooth.

Swap the currant

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

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

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