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Dessert

A Bread Pudding

A bread pudding made with stale French rolls, milk, eggs, brandy, sugar, lemon peel, nutmeg, currants, baked in a puff pastry-lined dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the crumbled rolls in boiling milk for a short time.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix them with the soaked rolls and milk.

  3. Add brandy, sugar, lemon peel, nutmeg, and currants; mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a baking dish and line it with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until set.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 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

Stale french rolls
Their dry, porous crumb soaks up the milk and custard, giving the pudding its body.
Eggs
They set when baked, binding the soaked bread into a sliceable custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard with the eggs.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm flavour note to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the eggs and brandy.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves a runny centre, while overbaking makes the custard grainy and dry.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, brandy, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, 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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