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Dessert

Custard Bread Pudding

A custard made from bread crumbs, milk, and cornstarch, poured over fried bread and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Custard Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Dissolve salt and baking soda in a little milk.

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.

  3. Heat the mixture in a custard kettle until it boils.

  4. Mix cornstarch with cold milk and add to the boiling mixture.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture over diced fried bread in a serving dish.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up milk to form the body of the pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling milk mixture into a smooth custard.
Baking soda
Alters the acidity of the milk mixture, affecting its texture and browning.
Fried bread
Provides crisp, toasted pieces that contrast with the soft custard.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch mixture to the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold milk first so it disperses without lumps. Once added to the boiling mixture, it thickens quickly, so stirring should be constant to keep the custard smooth.

“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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