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Dessert

Cold Bread Pudding

A chilled bread pudding made with stale bread, currants, eggs, milk, sugar, nutmeg, and served with cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cold Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the stale bread into thin slices.

  2. Wash and pick the currants.

  3. Butter the slices of bread.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer bread in a pudding mold, sprinkling with currants between layers until all is used.

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar together, then mix in the milk and a little grated nutmeg.

  3. Pour the mixture over the layered bread.

  4. Let it stand for 30 minutes until browned.

Serve

  1. Set aside to cool and serve with cream sauce.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds together when cut and served.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard as it stands.
Milk
Makes the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and gives a soft texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown.
Currants
Add pockets of sweet, tart fruit between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Let it stand for 30 minutes until browned. The bread needs time to soak up the egg and milk custard so it becomes moist throughout. The custard sets as the eggs cook, so the pudding holds together when cut and served.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, sugar, milk, nutmeg, cream. 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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