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Dessert

Fancy Bread Pudding

A sweet bread pudding with lemon, jam, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Fancy 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 base

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

  2. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, lemon rind, milk, sugar, and egg yolks.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and bake until light brown.

Top and finish

  1. Spread a thin layer of jam over the baked pudding.

  2. In a separate bowl, whisk egg whites until stiff.

  3. Add 1 cup of sugar and lemon juice to the egg whites and whisk until well combined.

  4. Pour the egg white mixture over the pudding and bake for an additional 20 minutes.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk and eggs to set softly.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard base and help it set into a tender, smooth texture.
Milk
Provides liquid that softens the bread crumbs and forms the custard with the eggs.
Egg whites
Whisked until stiff to make a light meringue topping that bakes to a golden finish.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue stay glossy and stable.
Jam
Adds a fruity sweetness and a layer of flavour between the pudding and meringue.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites under-whipped stay loose and weep, while over-whipped ones turn grainy and dry. Stiff, glossy peaks hold air that gives the topping its lift and structure while baking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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