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Dessert

Bread Crumb Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with milk, bread crumbs, eggs, lemon, and sugar, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Crumb 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, beat the sugar and egg yolks together.

  2. Add the milk, bread crumbs, and grated rind of the lemon to the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and place it in the oven.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites and lemon juice until stiff.

  2. Fold in the powdered sugar and spread it over the top of the pudding.

  3. Return the pudding to the oven and bake until the top is browned.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard base while whites whip into a stiff meringue that sets and holds the topping.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and egg mixture, giving the pudding its soft, body-filled texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread soaks up and that the eggs set into a custard.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue topping and helps it stay smooth and stable when folded in.
Lemon
Rind adds aroma to the custard and juice adds acidity that stabilizes the beaten egg whites.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Whites must be beaten enough to hold stiff peaks so the topping stays airy and bakes into a light meringue instead of collapsing into the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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