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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dish made by soaking bread crumbs in boiling milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, then baking or boiling.

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

Prepare the base

  1. Pour boiling milk over the bread crumbs until they absorb it.

  2. Let the mixture soak for a while.

  3. For every tablespoon of bread, add one beaten egg.

  4. Sweeten the mixture to your liking and grate in some nutmeg.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered basin.

  2. Boil for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size, or bake until light 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. 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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk to create a soft, custard-like structure.
Boiling milk
Softens the bread and carries moisture that gives the pudding its tender texture.
Egg
Binds the soaked bread and sets as it cooks, giving the pudding its firm yet tender structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the eggy, milky base.

The step that matters

Transfer the mixture to a buttered basin.. Greasing the basin prevents the pudding from sticking as the egg sets, so it releases cleanly when turned out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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.

More bread pudding recipes

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

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