Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Baked Bread Pudding

A simple bread pudding made with rusked bread, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and butter, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

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

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, combine the rusked bread, milk, beaten eggs, sugar, salt, grated nutmeg, and melted butter, and mix well until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake for about 1 hour or until set.

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. 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
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and body.
Rusked bread
Soaks up the milk and egg mixture, forming the soft body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and the eggs set into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly during baking.
Melted butter
Adds fat, contributing richness and a tender texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it loose and watery, while over-baking can make it curdled and dry.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes