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Dessert

Susie's Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from bread crumbs, eggs, milk, butter, sugar, and lemon, baked and topped with meringue.

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 ↓

Susie's 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. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub melted butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs and the white of one egg until light.

  4. Mix the butter and sugar with the beaten eggs.

  5. Soak bread crumbs in milk, then mix them with the other ingredients vigorously.

  6. Add lemon juice and grated peel last.

  7. Pour mixture into a buttered baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until nearly set in the middle.

  2. Spread meringue made from reserved egg whites, beaten stiff with a little sugar, on top.

  3. Serve warm or cold, with a little cream poured over each serving.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while beaten whites form the meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they form the bulk and body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the meringue become stiff and glossy.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the juice and grated peel.

The step that matters

Baking until nearly set. Eggs set as they heat and keep cooking after leaving the oven. Removing the pudding while the centre still looks slightly soft keeps it moist and prevents a rubbery, overcooked texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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