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Dessert

Fried Bread Pudding

A fried bread pudding made by soaking stale bread in milk and eggs, then frying until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fried Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Cut the stale bread into slices.

  2. Beat the eggs in a bowl, then stir the eggs into the milk.

Soak and fry

  1. Dip the bread slices into the milk and egg mixture.

  2. Layer the dipped slices on a dish and let them stand for 1 hour.

  3. Fry the slices in a little butter until they are light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with pudding sauce or syrup.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 bread
Its dry, open crumb soaks up the egg and milk mixture without falling apart.
Eggs
Set during cooking to give the pudding structure and a custard-like texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard with the eggs.
Butter
Adds fat for frying, helping the slices brown and develop a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Letting the dipped slices stand for 1 hour. The standing time lets the bread absorb the egg and milk mixture evenly, so the slices are moist throughout rather than dry in the center or soggy on the outside.

“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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