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Dessert

Plain Bread Pudding, Baked

A baked pudding made from stale bread soaked in milk, butter, spices, sugar, baking soda, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Plain Bread Pudding, Baked

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Bread Pudding, Baked

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.

Soak the bread

  1. Break the stale bread into pieces and pour the boiling milk over it.

  2. Add the butter and cover the dish tightly.

  3. Let it cool.

  4. Mash the mixture until fine.

Make the custard

  1. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and dissolved baking soda.

  2. Beat the eggs until light.

  3. Add the eggs to the mixture.

  4. Pour everything into a well-buttered pudding dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve warm with hard sauce.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up milk and setting into a soft crumb.
Milk
Softens the bread and, with the eggs, creates the custard that sets during baking.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when baked, giving the pudding its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Let the bread soak and cool before adding the eggs. Hot milk would scramble the eggs instead of letting them blend smoothly. Cooling and mashing the bread first gives an even texture and keeps the eggs from curdling.

“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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