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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with eggs, butter, bread crumbs, milk, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard base

  1. Scald the milk.

  2. Add the butter and bread crumbs to the milk.

  3. Beat the eggs until light and mix in the salt and spices.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the bread mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about an hour.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and a tender, sliceable body.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the warm milk and egg mixture, forming the soft, absorbent body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that moistens the bread and dissolves into the custard as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a softer, more tender crumb.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chew throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Scalding the milk. Scalding the milk, then adding it to the bread, softens the crumbs so they absorb the custard evenly. Milk scalded to just below boiling also helps dissolve the butter and begins to cook the proteins gently.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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