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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dish made from stale bread, milk, eggs, spices, and sugar, baked and served with a buttery sauce.

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

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Crumble the stale bread into a bowl.

  2. Pour the milk over the bread.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, cinnamon, and allspice; mix thoroughly.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) until dry.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine flour, butter, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Add enough water to dissolve the sugar and cook until thick.

  3. Season with fresh lemon and add whisky or wine just before serving.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up milk and eggs to set into a soft crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set on baking, giving the pudding its custard-like structure.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that the bread absorbs and that the eggs set into a custard.
White sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken as it cooks down with the flour and butter.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and cohesive rather than runny.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving it a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake until dry. Baking at a low temperature until the custard is set and the surface dry prevents a wet, runny pudding; the eggs must firm fully to hold the bread together.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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