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Dessert

Delicious Bread Pudding

A moist pudding made from layered bread, currants, citron, milk, eggs, and sugar, baked until set.

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 ↓

Delicious Bread Pudding

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.

Prepare

  1. Butter the slices of bread and layer them in a dish with currants and citron in between.

  2. Pour 1 quart of milk over the bread.

  3. Add 4 well-beaten eggs and sugar to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Serve hot or cold with 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.

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).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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 of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that moistens the bread and forms the custard base.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the bread and milk into a firm, sliceable custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and fruit flavour throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking makes it curdled and rubbery. Baking only until the centre just firms gives a smooth, tender pudding.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

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