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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon, butter, topped with jelly or sweetmeats.

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.

Prepare the base

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine the bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter. Mix until well combined and pour into a baking dish.

Make the meringue topping

  1. In another bowl, whip the egg whites with 1 cup sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold in the lemon juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Spread a layer of jelly or sweetmeats over the pudding, then top with the whipped egg whites.

  2. Bake until the top is golden brown.

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, soaking up the milk to set into a soft custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook, giving the pudding a rich, set texture.
Egg whites
Whip into stiff peaks to form a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs absorb and that the eggs set into custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the whipped egg whites hold their stiff peaks.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped until firm and glossy so they trap air and hold their shape. Under-whipped whites will deflate and make the topping flat and dense. Folding gently preserves that trapped air.

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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