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Dessert

Bread Pudding Without Milk

A baked bread pudding made with dry bread, fruit, butter, eggs, and spices, without milk.

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 Pudding Without Milk

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling water over the dry bread pieces and let them soften.

  2. Mix in the fruit, melted butter, egg yolks, spice, and sugar.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 20 minutes.

  2. Spread the beaten egg whites on top and brown nicely before serving.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Dry bread pieces
Form the body of the pudding, soaking up liquid to become soft and tender.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help bind the pudding as it sets.
Egg whites
Form a light topping that puffs and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the pudding.
Fruit
Adds moisture, sweetness and fruity flavor throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Browning the beaten egg whites. Egg whites need to be beaten to soft peaks and spread over the top so they cook into a set, golden layer; underbeaten whites stay runny and overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy.

“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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