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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from grated bread soaked in milk, eggs, sugar, and mace, optionally with currants or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

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 ↓

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 custard base

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Pour boiled milk or cream over grated bread and let stand 2 hours.

  3. Mash bread mixture to remove lumps.

  4. Add eggs, sugar, and mace, and mix well.

  5. Fold in soaked currants or raisins if using.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour mixture into baking dish and bake 1 hour.

  2. Serve with cold sauce or fruit sauce if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk to create a soft, custardy crumb.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding and giving it a tender, custard-like structure.
Milk or cream
Provides moisture and richness, softening the bread and forming the custard base.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Mash bread mixture to remove lumps. Lumps of dry, unsoaked bread stay firm and uneven after baking. Breaking them up lets the milk and bread blend into a smooth, even texture.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, sugar, mace):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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