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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from soaked bread crumbs, milk, sugar, raisins, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

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 ↓

Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk for 1 hour.

  2. Squeeze the soaked bread crumbs to a pulp.

  3. Mix the pulp with 1½ cups of milk.

Make the mixture

  1. Add sugar, raisins, melted butter, and egg yolks to the mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a froth and fold into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 40 minutes.

  2. Serve with wine sauce, hot or cold, according to taste.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and absorb the milk and butter.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help bind the mixture as it sets.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they lighten the texture and help the pudding rise.
Milk
Moistens the bread and helps the mixture set into a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that lifts the pudding. Stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, so fold gently and keep the mixture airy.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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