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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding topped with jam and meringue, served with a lemon‑sugar sauce and candied fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar together, then add the sweet milk and vanilla.

  3. Grease a pudding dish with melted butter and fill it three-quarters full with stale bread crumbs.

  4. Pour the custard mixture over the bread crumbs and let it soak for a few minutes.

Bake and top

  1. Place the dish in a pan of hot water and bake for about 20 minutes.

  2. Spread a layer of jam over the top and cover with meringue.

  3. Bake until the meringue is a fawn color.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Combine water, sugar, and lemon juice in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Skim the sauce well, then add the candied pineapple and cherries, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. If desired, boil the raisins in water for 1 hour until plump and soft, then add to the bread pudding.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + breadtop 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the pudding together as it bakes.
Stale bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard to hold its structure.
Sweet milk
Makes the custard liquid that sets around the bread crumbs.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and the sauce, and adds flavor to the meringue.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor under the meringue layer.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue to a fawn color. Meringue made with egg whites and sugar can weep or turn dark if overbaked, so watch the color closely and pull it once it is golden-brown.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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