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Dessert

Bread and Fruit Pudding

A pudding made by layering stale bread with stewed fruit and sugar, baked in a buttered basin and served with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 and Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Butter a pudding basin.

  2. Sprinkle some moist sugar over it.

  3. Line the basin with thick slices of stale bread, overlapping them.

  4. Place a round piece at the bottom.

Fill and set

  1. Stew the fruit with sugar until boiling.

  2. Pour the stewed fruit into the basin to fill it.

  3. Let it cool completely.

  4. Cover with a large plate.

  5. Turn it out.

Serve

  1. Serve with powdered sugar.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,638 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

Stale bread
Forms the firm outer shell that holds the fruit in its shape when turned out.
Fruit
Provides the main filling, adding moisture and fruity flavour as it stews.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps it soften and colour the bread lining.
Butter
Greases the basin so the pudding releases cleanly when turned out.

The step that matters

Let it cool completely. Stewed fruit is hot and loose. Cooling lets its juices thicken and set, so the pudding holds its shape when turned out.

“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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