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Dessert

Cherry Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with stale bread, milk, eggs, sugar, cherries, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cherry 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 the milk and bread

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the milk with a pinch of baking soda.

  3. Spread butter on both sides of the bread slices.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer some buttered bread in a buttered bake-dish.

  2. Pour a little of the milk mixture over the bread.

  3. Sprinkle some cherries on top, then add more buttered bread.

  4. Repeat the layering until the dish is full, finishing with a well-buttered layer of bread.

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

  6. Bake for one hour, then uncover and brown the top delicately.

  7. Serve hot with 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. Milk + breadtop 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Soaks into the bread and forms the custard that sets around the fruit.
Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds its shape when baked.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk and egg mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Cherries
Add fruit flavour and tartness through the layers.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown on the top layer.

The step that matters

Cover and set in boiling water. The covered dish in a water bath keeps the custard heat gentle and even, so eggs set smoothly without curdling or drying. Uncovering too early can make the top dry and the custard grainy.

“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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