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Dessert

Baked Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale rolls, eggs, milk, sugar, and spice, served with cold sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding dish and fill it with stale rolls.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then mix in the milk, sugar, and spice.

  3. Pour the mixture over the rolls.

  4. Place a plate over the rolls to press them down into the milk.

Soak and bake

  1. Let the dish stand for 4 to 5 hours.

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

Serve

  1. Serve with cold sauce.

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

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

  2. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Stale rolls
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the custard as it stands.
Eggs
Set the custard as it bakes, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that moistens the rolls and bakes into a soft texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Letting the dish stand. Standing lets the dry rolls absorb the custard fully. Pressing them under a plate keeps them submerged, so the pudding bakes evenly rather than leaving dry pockets.

“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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