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Dessert

Bread Batter Pudding

A custard-like pudding made by baking a mixture of milk, bread crumbs, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Batter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the bread crumbs and mix well until smooth.

  3. Add the salt and let the mixture cool slightly.

  4. Incorporate the beaten eggs into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake until set, but not until it separates.

  2. Serve with hot liquid 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. Egg + buttertop 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

Eggs
Set the custard into a sliceable structure as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard base.
Fine bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and form the body of the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set, but not until it separates. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the custard firms into a tender pudding. Overbaking squeezes out liquid and curdles the eggs, leaving a watery, grainy texture.

“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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