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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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

  3. Spread butter on the slices of bread.

Assemble

  1. Fit a layer of buttered bread slices into the bottom of a buttered baking dish.

  2. Pour some custard over the bread and sprinkle with raisins.

  3. Repeat layering with more buttered bread, custard, and raisins until the dish is full. Ensure the last layer is well-soaked with custard.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the dish tightly and place it in a baking pan filled with hot water.

  2. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  3. Serve hot with sweet sauce poured 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

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding firms up as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Bread
Provides the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the layers together.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Ensure the last layer is well-soaked with custard. Dry bread on top stays tough and pale while the custard below sets. Thorough soaking keeps the whole pudding moist and evenly set.

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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