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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, butter, topped with jelly and frosted with beaten egg whites and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

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 ↓

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.

Make the pudding

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake until set.

Top and brown

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites with the pulverized sugar until stiff.

  2. Add the lemon juice to the egg whites and mix well.

  3. Once the pudding is baked, spread a layer of jelly on top.

  4. Spread the beaten egg white mixture over the jelly and lightly brown in the oven.

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. 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

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk and egg.
Milk
Provides moisture and softens the bread crumbs into a custard base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as it bakes and add richness to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the egg white topping stay stable.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Stiff whites trap air and hold their shape on top. Under-whipped whites slump into the jelly, and overbaking can make the topping weep and toughen.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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