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Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding

A pudding made by soaking bread in boiled milk or cream, then baking with eggs, sugar, lemon, and optional mace, raisins, or wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread 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 ↓

Boiled 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.

Soak the bread

  1. Pour the boiled milk or cream over the grated bread and let it soak for 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Mash the soaked bread and mix it finely.

Make the mixture and bake

  1. Add the beaten eggs, sugar, lemon juice, and ground mace, if using.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

Finish

  1. Optionally, add raisins or a splash of wine before boiling.

  2. Boil the pudding for 4 hours.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 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

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk to hold its structure.
Milk or cream
Softens the bread and adds moisture and a rich, tender texture.
Eggs
Set during cooking to bind the pudding and give it a firm, custard-like body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the sweetness and richness.

The step that matters

Bake at a moderate temperature. Egg proteins set gently at moderate heat. If the oven runs too hot or the pudding bakes too long, the eggs can curdle and the texture turns rubbery and watery.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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