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Dessert

Substantial Bread Puddings

A moist bread pudding made with soaked bread, fruit, nuts, egg, milk, sugar, and spices, baked or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Substantial Bread Puddings

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. Soak the bread in hot water until soft.

  2. Break the soaked bread into fine pieces in a pie dish.

Make and bake

  1. Add currants, raisins, chopped nuts or almonds, beaten egg, milk, sugar, and spice.

  2. Mix well and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.

Alternative and serve

  1. Alternatively, tie the mixture in a pudding cloth and boil.

  2. Serve with white sauce or stewed fresh fruit.

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. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it sets.
Egg
Sets the milk mixture into a firm, sliceable custard as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg sets and that keeps the pudding moist.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins firm up as they heat, so the pudding must reach a set state. Underbaked centres stay wet and loose, while overbaking can make the custard grainy and dry.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, nuts, egg, milk, 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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