Skip to main content
Dessert

French Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from stale bread, milk, eggs, lemon, sugar, and butter, topped with jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

French Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated bread, fresh milk, egg yolks, lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar, and butter until well combined.

Make the custard base

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake until it resembles custard.

  2. Allow the pudding to cool, then spread jelly or preserves on top.

Top and bake again

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding the remaining lemon juice and sugar.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the preserves and return the pudding to the oven.

  3. Bake until the top is light brown.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Stale bread
Soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its body and crumb.
Milk
Provides the liquid that keeps the pudding moist and lets the custard set.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as they bake, setting it into a custard and adding richness.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten egg whites hold their stiff peaks.
Butter
Adds fat, which contributes richness and a tender texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Spreading the beaten egg whites over the preserves. Stiff peaks deflate if the whites sit too long, so spread them right away and carry them fully to the edges. Covering the whole surface seals the topping and helps it brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More french pudding recipes

Sauce 4 See all 25 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes