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Dessert

Superior Bread Puddings

A custard bread pudding with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and optional jam, finished with a meringue topping.

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 yolks of the eggs very lightly and 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 only two-thirds full.

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

Top and bake

  1. Spread jam or fruit conserve over the top.

  2. Make a meringue with the whipped egg whites and ½ cup of sugar, then cover the pudding with it.

  3. 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 whites form the meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its body as they set.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a custard.
White sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the custard.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F until the custard is set. Egg proteins set as they heat, so pulling the pudding too early leaves a runny centre, while overbaking makes it grainy and watery. Filling only two-thirds full leaves room for it to rise and cook evenly.

“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

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