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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made with soaked digestive bread, raisins, eggs, milk, sugar, nutmeg, and butter, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

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

  1. Break the digestive bread into small pieces and soak in water overnight to soften the crust.

  2. Layer the soaked bread in the bottom of a pudding dish.

  3. Add a thick layer of seeded raisins.

  4. Add another layer of bread.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs.

  2. Add sugar, milk, and grated nutmeg, then mix well.

  3. Pour the egg mixture gently over the layered bread and raisins.

Bake

  1. Dot the top with bits of butter.

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

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Digestive bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it sets.
Eggs (in the method)
Set the custard, giving the pudding its structure as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the eggs set into a soft custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, browning the top as it melts.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread. Soaking softens the bread so it absorbs the custard evenly. Dry or unsoftened pieces stay tough and can leave pockets of unset egg in the pudding.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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

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