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Dessert

Bread, Pudding

Bread pudding made with stale bread, milk, eggs, cinnamon, sugar, suet, and raisins, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread, Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Bread, 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.

Soak the bread

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Pour the boiled milk over the stale bread.

  3. Let the mixture soak for 1 to 2 hours.

  4. Rub the soaked bread finely with your hands.

Mix and bake

  1. Beat the eggs.

  2. Add the beaten eggs to the bread mixture.

  3. Stir in the cinnamon, sugar, and chopped suet.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk to hold its shape.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that softens the bread and keeps the pudding moist.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give a firm, custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding tender.
Cinnamon
Provides the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the pudding.

The step that matters

Rub the soaked bread finely. Dry bread absorbs liquid slowly, so large lumps can stay dry inside. Breaking the soaked bread fine gives an even, moist crumb and a uniform set once the eggs bake.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits less well

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