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
Assemble
Layer sliced bread and your chosen preserve in a pudding mold.
Repeat layers until the mold is nearly full.
Add custard and steam
Pour warm milk over the layers.
Mix in the beaten eggs and cover the mold with a piece of linen.
Place the mold in a saucepan with boiling water, ensuring the water comes halfway up the mold.
Steam for 20 minutes.
Serve
Serve with pudding sauce.
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.
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 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
- Bread
- Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding together.
- Preserve
- Adds sweetness and fruit flavour, and moisture between the bread layers.
- Milk
- Hydrates the bread and forms the liquid base of the custard.
- Eggs
- Set when heated, giving the pudding a soft, sliceable custard texture.
The step that matters
Keep the steaming water at a gentle simmer around the mold. Eggs set when heated, so steady moderate heat cooks the custard evenly. Boiling too hard can make the texture rough or porous and may leave the outside overcooked before the centre sets.
“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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