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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with milk, butter, eggs, bread crumbs, and sugar, topped with cinnamon and served with rich cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter, egg yolks, and sugar.

  3. Gradually stir in the milk.

  4. Add the bread crumbs and beat thoroughly.

  5. Pour the mixture into a mold and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour until brown.

  2. Remove from the oven and cover with meringue made from the egg whites.

  3. Bake for a few more minutes.

  4. Serve with rich cream.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  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

Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a custard, keeping the pudding moist.
Eggs
Set as they heat, giving the pudding its structure and custard body.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and custard, giving the pudding its soft, bready body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. The egg proteins set as the custard heats. Too much heat or too long in the oven makes them tighten and curdle, leaving the pudding grainy and rubbery.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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