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Dessert

Bread and Raisin Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding with raisins, baked in a water bath.

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 ↓

Bread and Raisin 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter the slices of bread.

  3. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and milk to make a custard.

Assemble

  1. Line the bottom of a buttered dish with a layer of bread.

  2. Wet the bread with custard, then sprinkle with raisins.

  3. Repeat layering with more bread, custard, and raisins until the dish is full.

  4. Ensure the top layer is bread, well buttered and soaked in custard.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the dish and place it in a pan of boiling water.

  2. Bake for one hour, keeping the water at a fast boil.

  3. Carefully turn out the pudding and pour hot sweet sauce over it.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 to become tender.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, binding the pudding into a soft, sliceable form.
Milk
Makes the liquid custard that moistens the bread and sets into a creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown lightly during baking.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the layers.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top layer brown and crisp slightly.

The step that matters

Keeping the water at a fast boil. The pan of water provides gentle, steady heat so the custard sets evenly without curdling. If the water drops off the boil, the bake slows and the custard may set unevenly.

Swap the raisin

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, butter, 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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