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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from scalded milk, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, butter, and lemon, topped with a stiff egg white mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine scalded milk and bread crumbs in a bowl.

  2. Add beaten egg yolks, sugar, butter, and lemon rind to the mixture and mix well.

  3. Bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat egg whites with powdered sugar and lemon juice until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding.

  3. Return to the oven until the topping is a brownish yellow.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. 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

Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and eggs to form the soft body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Bind the custard and set during baking, giving the pudding structure.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms a light topping which browns in the oven.
Milk
Provides liquid that softens the crumbs and sets with the eggs into a custard.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue topping and helps it stay stable while whipping.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until stiff so they trap air and hold their shape. Under-whipped whites will collapse or weep, and over-whipped whites turn dry and grainy, so the topping may not brown evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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