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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard of milk, eggs, and sugar baked with buttered bread and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Butter and bread 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Butter a baking dish and sprinkle the bottom with raisins.

  3. Butter a few slices of bread and lay them over the raisins to cover.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat together the milk and eggs.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Pour the custard over the bread.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until set, then turn onto another dish and cut into slices when cold.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 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

Eggs
Set the custard as they heat, binding the pudding together.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks into the bread and forms the custard.
Slices of bread
Soak up the custard and give the pudding its body.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Raisins
Add pockets of chewy sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins firm as they heat, so the custard sets. Overbaking squeezes out liquid and makes the custard grainy and rubbery, so check for a just-firm centre rather than baking longer.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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