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Dessert

Bich Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from butter, sugar, milk, eggs, lemon juice, bread crumbs, and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Bich 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.

Make the custard base

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk, beaten egg yolks, lemon juice, bread crumbs, and salt. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until firm.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add 2 tablespoons of sugar to make meringue.

  3. Spread the meringue over the pudding.

  4. Brown slightly in the oven.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites form the light meringue topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and eggs, giving the pudding its body and soft texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a tender custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the meringue.

The step that matters

Whipping and browning the meringue. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff, with sugar added gradually, to hold a stable foam. Under-whipped meringue will weep or collapse, and over-browning in the oven can scorch its sugars quickly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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