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Dessert

Boiled Bread-pudding

A pudding made by soaking stale bread in boiling milk, then baking with eggs and sugar.

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

Boiled Bread-pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Combine grated stale bread and boiling milk in a bowl. Let stand for 1 hour.

  2. Add sugar to taste and beaten eggs. Mix well.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a bowl large enough to hold the pudding.

  2. Wet a cloth in hot water, dust it with flour, and tie it over the bowl.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the bowl in a large kettle half full of boiling water.

  2. Boil steadily for 30 minutes.

  3. Turn the pudding out of the bowl and serve immediately with your choice of pudding 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 + 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Its dry, porous crumb soaks up the hot milk and gives the pudding body.
Milk
Hydrates the bread and, with the eggs, forms the soft custard that sets as it cooks.
Eggs
Set when heated and bind the bread and milk into a sliceable pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Boil steadily for 30 minutes. The water must stay at a steady boil so the egg-and-milk custard cooks through and sets firmly. Too little heat leaves the pudding wet and loose in the center.

“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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