Skip to main content
Dessert

A Fine Bread Pudding

A sweet bread pudding with lemon, eggs, and a whipped egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

A Fine 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 the custard

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

  2. In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg yolks, lemon rind, and butter. Mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Make the meringue and finish

  1. In another bowl, whip the egg whites until soft peaks form.

  2. Gradually add powdered sugar and lemon juice, beating until stiff peaks form.

  3. Spread a layer of jelly or jam over the baked pudding.

  4. Top with the whipped egg whites and return to the oven to brown slightly.

  5. Serve cold with cream.

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. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding by soaking up the milk and setting with the eggs.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the browned topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the custard.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the topping.
Jelly or raspberry jam
Adds a fruity sweetness and acidity in a layer beneath the topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites under-whipped or greasy with yolk will not hold a stiff foam, so the topping collapses and weeps in the oven. Whip them in a clean, grease-free bowl and add the sugar gradually to keep the foam stable.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRaspberry JamRaspberry Jam150 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes