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Dessert

Superior Bread Puddings

A custard bread pudding with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, bread crumbs, flavored with vanilla, rose‑water, or lemon, topped with jam and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Superior Bread Puddings

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.

Make the custard

  1. Rub the butter into 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until very light, then stir them into the butter and sugar mixture until creamy.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk, then add to the mixture along with the flavoring.

  4. Pour into a buttered pudding dish, filling it two-thirds full.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the custard is set.

Top and bake

  1. Spread jam or fruit conserve on top, then cover with meringue made from whipped egg whites and ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Bake until the meringue begins to color.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with cream.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and the whites whip into the meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its body and soft structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs to form the custard.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.
Jam or jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and acidity between the custard and the meringue.

The step that matters

Bake the custard until just set. Egg proteins set as the custard heats, so overbaking makes it curdled, rubbery, or weeping. Pull it when the centre barely wobbles, before the meringue goes on and the bake continues.

“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 bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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