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Dessert

Baked Pudding

A baked dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, lemon, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Baked 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 ↓

Baked 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 the custard base

  1. Heat the milk to boiling.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the bread crumbs.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.

  4. Beat the eggs until light.

  5. Mix the beaten eggs with the milk and bread mixture.

  6. Add sugar, butter, lemon extract, and grated lemon peel to the mixture.

Fill and bake

  1. Butter small cups and add a few currants or raisins to each cup.

  2. Pour the mixture into the cups until they are a little more than half full.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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

Eggs
Beaten eggs set the custard as they bake, giving the pudding its structure.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the body of the pudding, holding moisture within it.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and creates a creamy, moist custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture and flavor.

The step that matters

Fill the cups only a little more than half full. Bread pudding rises and expands as the eggs set in the oven, so overfilling can cause the mixture to spill over. Leaving room lets it puff and bake evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More bread pudding recipes

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

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