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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from soaked bread crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the crumbs

  1. Cover the bread crumbs with milk and add cinnamon, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

  2. Heat gently until the crumbs are well soaked.

  3. Remove the cinnamon and lemon peel.

  4. Beat the crumbs and milk together.

Finish and boil

  1. Add the beaten eggs, butter, sugar, and currants.

  2. Boil the mixture for one hour.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the milk to give it body.
Milk
Soaks into the crumbs and keeps the pudding moist as it cooks.
Eggs
Set as they cook, binding the soaked crumbs into a firm, custard-like pudding.
Butter
Adds fat, which contributes richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices and tartness of the lemon peel.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture for one hour. Eggs set when heated, and high heat over a long time can make the egg proteins tighten too far, leaving the pudding grainy, rubbery, or watery. Keeping the heat controlled helps the pudding set evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, butter, 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.

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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