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Dessert

Bread Pudding

Bread pudding made with soaked bread crumbs, milk, citron, eggs, sugar, spices, brandy, and butter, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the crumbs in the milk until soft.

Layer and bake

  1. Put a layer of soaked crumbs into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle with citron and spice, then cover with more soaked crumbs.

  3. Repeat the layering until the dish is nearly full.

  4. Pour the whipped eggs mixed with sugar, butter, and brandy over the top.

  5. Bake covered for 25 minutes, then uncover to brown.

  6. Serve warm; no sauce needed.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Bind the custard and help the pudding set as it bakes.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and forms the custard that moistens the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Citron
Adds chewy, tart fruit flavor throughout the layers.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Pour the custard slowly over the layers. The egg mixture needs to soak down through the crumbs so the pudding sets evenly. Pouring too fast can leave dry crumbs on top and liquid pooling below.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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