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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, lemon, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

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 pudding

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

  2. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, milk, egg yolks, butter, ¼ cup sugar, baking powder, lemon rind, and lemon juice until well combined.

  3. Add more milk if necessary to achieve a soft batter.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set and golden brown.

Top and brown

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add the remaining ¼ cup sugar.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding and return to the oven to brown.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine lemon juice, a little water, ½ cup sugar, and 1 egg in a saucepan.

  2. Mix well and boil for a few minutes, then add a little wine to flavor.

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. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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, soaking up the milk to make a soft custard-like base.
Eggs
Set the custard when baked, and the whipped whites give the meringue-style topping its airy structure.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and forms the custard that sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the pudding so it rises and holds a softer texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the egg whites stay stable when whipped into the topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks with sugar added gradually so they hold air and form a stable topping. Under-whipped or greasy whites will collapse and weep during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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