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Dessert

Baked Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and nutmeg, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 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

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

  2. Place the bread crumbs in a deep dish.

  3. Heat the milk until boiling.

  4. Pour the hot milk over the bread crumbs and soak until the crumbs are soft.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugar.

  2. Add the melted butter and nutmeg to the yolk mixture.

  3. Quickly fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-greased baking dish.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1.5 hours until browned.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dry bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the hot milk to become soft.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook and add structure, with whites lightening the texture.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the crumbs and sets with the eggs into a custard.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites trap air that gives lift, but they deflate over time, so folding them in quickly keeps the pudding light and airy rather than dense.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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