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Dessert

Confederate Pudding

A sweet bread pudding made with sliced bread, butter, jam, milk, eggs, baked and served with a butter-sugar-brandy-cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Confederate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Slice the bread very thin and butter each slice.

  2. Spread jelly, jam, or preserves on each slice.

  3. Fill a buttered baking dish with the prepared bread.

Make the custard and bake

  1. Pour the sweet milk mixed with the beaten eggs over the bread.

  2. Let the milk soak into the bread, then bake until solid.

Serve

  1. Serve with sauce made by creaming butter and sugar, adding brandy and cream, and thickening over boiling water.

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.

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. 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set when heated, binding the milk and bread into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that soaks into the bread and sets with the eggs.
Baker's bread
Absorbs the custard and forms the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the bread and helps the slices brown.
Jelly, jam, or preserves
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Letting the milk soak in before baking. The bread needs time to absorb the egg and milk mixture so the custard is evenly distributed. Eggs set when heated, so the pudding should be baked until fully firm. Underbaked custard stays wet and loose.

“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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