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Dessert

Baked Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

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

Baked Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Place the bread crumbs in a deep dish.

  2. Heat the milk until boiling and pour it over the crumbs. Soak until the crumbs are soft.

  3. Add the egg yolks and sugar, then mix in the melted butter and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Quickly fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a well-greased baking dish and bake until browned, about 1 to 1.5 hours.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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

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

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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while beaten whites lighten the texture and help it rise.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the soft, tender body of the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the bread and sets with the eggs to form a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites quickly. Beaten whites trap air that gives lift; over-stirring or waiting lets the foam collapse, leaving the pudding dense and flat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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