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Dessert

Superior Bread Puddings

A custard bread pudding made with bread crumbs, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and jelly or jam, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Superior Bread Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Rub the butter into a cupful of sugar.

  2. Beat the yolks very lightly, and stir these together with the butter-sugar mixture to form a cream.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  4. Add the flavoring (vanilla, rose-water, or lemon flavoring) to the mixture.

  5. Combine the soaked bread crumbs, the yolk mixture, and the flavoring.

  6. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish, filling it about two-thirds full.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until the custard is set.

  2. While the pudding is baking, spread jam or fruit conserve over the top.

  3. Make a meringue from the whipped egg whites and half a cupful of sugar.

  4. Spread the meringue over the jam.

  5. Shut the oven and bake until the meringue begins to color.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with cream, or with warm sauce if desired. (In strawberry season, substitute a pint of fresh fruit for preserves.)

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

378Calories
14 gProtein
25 gFat
25 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Fruitnot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites form the meringue topping.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Absorb the milk and give the pudding its body and soft structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread soaks up and that the eggs set into custard.
Butter
Enriches the custard with fat, adding tenderness and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the meringue, and helps the meringue hold its structure.
Jam (in the method)
Adds fruit sweetness and acidity beneath the meringue layer.

The step that matters

Bake the meringue only until it begins to color. Meringue made from whipped egg whites and sugar can become tough, weepy, or over-browned if baked too long, so watch for the first light color.

“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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