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Dessert

Bread and Custard Pudding

A custard pudding made with soaked bread crumbs, milk, eggs, sugar, raisins, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Bread and Custard Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread mixture

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in 2 cups of the milk.

  2. Heat the mixture to scalding in a saucepan.

  3. Beat the mixture until smooth.

  4. Add the melted butter.

  5. Beat again for 1 minute.

Layer the pudding

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

  2. Pour ½ cup of the mixture into the bottom.

  3. Sprinkle cinnamon.

  4. Strew raisins.

  5. Layer with more mixture, spice, and fruit until all are used.

Make the custard and bake

  1. Heat the remaining 2 cups of milk.

  2. Pour the heated milk over the beaten yolks and sugar without boiling.

  3. Pour the custard over the pudding.

  4. Bake, covered, for 30 minutes.

  5. Uncover the pudding.

Finish and serve

  1. Spread a meringue made from whipped egg whites and a little powdered sugar on top if set.

  2. Serve warm with cream and sugar or butter and sugar.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Dried bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and give the pudding its soft, bready body.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that moistens the bread and sets with the eggs into custard.
Eggs
Coagulate when heated, giving the custard its set structure and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and butter.
Butter
Adds fat, which contributes richness and a tender mouthfeel.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Heating the milk without boiling. Egg proteins begin to coagulate with heat. Pouring the hot milk over the beaten yolks and sugar gently warms them, while boiling would curdle the eggs and leave the custard grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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