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Dessert

Newark Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, rice flour, raisins, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Newark Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in 1 pint of milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Add the soaked bread crumbs and milk to the yolks.

  4. Stir to a smooth batter.

  5. Mix in the rice flour, wet with cold milk, and the remaining pint of milk.

  6. Add the extract, melted butter, and raisins.

  7. Fold in the whipped egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered mold and bake for 1 hour.

  2. Turn out the pudding.

  3. Pour sauce over it, serving hard sauce alongside.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, and whipped whites lighten it as it sets.
Bread crumbs
Soaking absorbs milk, giving the pudding a soft, moist body.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the crumbs and flour and sets the custard-like texture.
Rice flour
Starch thickens the batter and gives a tender, smooth texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites, which lifts the pudding as it bakes. Stirring hard would deflate the foam and leave a dense result.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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