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Bread

French Pudding

A custard-like bread pudding made with stale bread, milk, eggs, lemon, sugar, butter, topped with jelly or preserves and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

French 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.

Make the custard

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated bread, fresh milk, egg yolks, lemon rind, lemon juice, sugar, and butter until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake until it resembles custard.

Top and finish

  1. Allow the pudding to cool, then spread jelly or preserves on top.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, adding the remaining lemon juice and sugar.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture over the preserves and return the pudding to the oven.

  4. Bake until the top is light 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.

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

Stale bread
Absorbs the milk and egg, giving the pudding its body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it, so it sets soft and smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped stiff, they form a light meringue topping that browns in the oven.
Fresh milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs into a custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Jelly or preserves
Adds fruity sweetness and a layer of flavour under the meringue.

The step that matters

Let the custard set before topping. Spreading jelly and meringue on a pudding that is still hot or runny can cause the layers to slide and the meringue to weep. Cooling lets the egg custard firm so the layers stay separate.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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