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German Pudding

A bread pudding made with milk, eggs, and sugar, fried and topped with a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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German 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 ↓

German 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 soak

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, beaten eggs, and sugar together.

  2. Dip the bread slices into the mixture.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the dipped slices on a greased griddle until brown.

  2. For the sauce, beat together the sugar, butter, and egg white until light.

  3. Flavor the sauce with lemon or vanilla.

  4. Spread the sauce thinly on each slice of toast.

  5. Place the toast in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 5 minutes.

  6. Serve with the remaining 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.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + breadtop 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

Eggs
Bind the milk and bread together and help the soaked slices set as they cook.
Milk
Soaks into the bread to moisten it and form the custard base.
Bread
Absorbs the egg and milk mixture, giving the pudding its body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the frying slices brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps the sauce become light and creamy when beaten.

The step that matters

Frying the dipped slices on the griddle. The slices are soaked in egg and milk, so they can scorch on the outside before the centre sets. Moderate heat and a greased surface let the custard cook through while the crust turns golden brown.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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