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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from scalded milk, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, butter, and lemon.

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

Make the custard base

  1. Combine scalded milk and bread crumbs in a bowl.

  2. Add beaten egg yolks, sugar, butter, and grated lemon rind; mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Top and brown

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

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding and return to the oven until golden brown.

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. Milk + breadtop 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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and give the pudding its body and structure.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich it so it sets softly when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms a light, brownable topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture in the custard.
Milk
Hydrates the bread crumbs and forms the liquid base that sets when baked.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold stiff peaks, because the air bubbles they trap give the topping its light texture. Underwhipped whites turn flat and weep, and the topping may not brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, 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.

More bread pudding recipes

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

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