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Dessert

Baked Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding of bread soaked in butter, sugar, eggs, milk, nutmeg, currants, and optional lemon rind or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Butter the bread slices and cut them into thin slices.

Assemble and soak

  1. Layer the bread in a 3‑pint baking dish, sprinkling grated nutmeg and currants between layers.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then add sugar and milk; mix well.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the layered bread and let it sit for 15–20 minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30 minutes until set and golden.

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds together when cooled and sliced.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and keeps the pudding moist.
Bread
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the bread brown and flavour the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture over the layered bread and let it sit. The bread needs time to absorb the custard evenly; if it is not soaked through, dry patches remain and the pudding may set unevenly in the oven.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, nutmeg, egg, bread, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, nutmeg, egg, bread, lemon. 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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Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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