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Dessert

Brown Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale brown bread, milk, sugar, lemon rind, vanilla, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Brown Bread Pudding

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Brown Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Break the stale brown bread into very small pieces and place in a basin.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the bread and let it soak until soft.

  3. Squeeze the soaked bread dry and beat it well with a fork, removing any hard pieces.

Mix the batter

  1. Add the brown sugar, lemon rind, and vanilla essence, and mix thoroughly.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered pint mold, cover with greased paper, and steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Turn the pudding out onto a hot dish and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 brown bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk to give a soft, moist crumb.
Boiling milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture so the pudding stays tender through steaming.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to give the pudding its structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses flavour that suits the brown bread.

The step that matters

Squeezing the soaked bread dry. Excess liquid left in the bread would thin the batter and make the pudding wet and heavy after steaming, so the bread should be pressed well before beating.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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