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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from stale bread, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon rind, butter, topped with jelly and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

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 ↓

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 large bowl, mix the stale bread, milk, beaten eggs, sugar, lemon rind, and butter until well combined.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then spread jelly on top.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add the sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Pour the meringue over the pudding mixture.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until the meringue is set and lightly browned.

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 + buttertop 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. 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaks up the milk and egg mixture, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Provides liquid that gives the custard base its soft, moist texture.
Eggs
Coagulate when baked, setting the custard so it holds together and slices cleanly.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the flavor and softens the crumb.
White sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the meringue to stiff peaks. Whites must be whipped to stiff peaks and the sugar added gradually so the foam stays stable and glossy. Under-whipped whites can weep or collapse, and the meringue may not set and brown evenly on the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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