Skip to main content
Dessert

Newark Pudding

A baked bread crumb pudding with milk, eggs, raisins, and butter, finished with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, stirring to form a smooth batter.

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

  5. Add the vanilla or almond extract, melted butter, and the floured raisins.

  6. Fold in the whipped egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

  3. Turn out the pudding.

  4. Pour sauce over it.

  5. Serve with hard 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. 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 thicken the batter and whipped whites lighten the pudding as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they give the pudding body and a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the crumbs and flour and forms the liquid base of the batter.
Rice flour
Adds structure so the batter sets firmly while staying light.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped and gently folded in; stirring hard knocks out the air, leaving a dense pudding instead of a light one.

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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes