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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from soaked white roll, milk, almonds, eggs, candied peel, boiled and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the crumb of the white roll in boiling milk in a covered basin.

  2. Once the milk has cooled, strain it off.

  3. Mix the strained milk with the almonds, sugar, and beaten eggs.

Fill the cloth

  1. Butter the middle of a pudding cloth and add the candied peel.

  2. Pour the batter over the peel.

  3. Tie up the cloth.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil in a saucepan of boiling water for 2 hours.

  2. Turn out the pudding into a dish, pour sauce or cream around it, and serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White roll
Its crumb soaks up the hot milk and forms the soft, absorbent body of the pudding.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set when heated, binding the pudding and giving it a custard-like structure.
Milk
Soaks the bread and supplies liquid that carries the pudding's soft, moist texture.
Almonds
Pounded almonds add body and a nutty flavour to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the batter.

The step that matters

Boil in a saucepan of boiling water for 2 hours. The cloth must stay submerged in steadily boiling water for the full time; if the water drops or the cloth is not tied snugly, the batter may leak or cook unevenly. Egg proteins set gradually with gentle, sustained heat, so keeping the water at a steady boil matters for an even, firm pudding.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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