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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A pudding made from soaked French rolls, egg yolks, cream or milk, macaroons, and white wine, boiled in a cloth or basin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak the sliced French rolls in the cream or milk.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix with the soaked rolls.

  3. Add sugar, orange-flower water, pounded macaroons, and white wine.

Boil and serve

  1. Tie the mixture in a buttered cloth or place in a basin.

  2. Boil water in a pot, then add the pudding and boil for 30 minutes.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Orange + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together730 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

French rolls
Absorb the cream or milk and form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Cream or milk
Soaks into the rolls and adds richness and moisture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard-like texture when cooked.
Pounded macaroons
Add almond flavour and sweetness while thickening the mixture.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that lighten the richness of the custard.

The step that matters

Boiling the pudding. The pudding must stay in gently simmering water so the egg yolks set evenly without curdling or turning rubbery. Boiling too hard can break the texture and make the cloth wrapping swell or leak.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, sugar, white wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, sugar, white wine. 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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