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Dessert

Bread Pudding-

A baked dessert of toasted bread crumbs, milk, egg, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bread Pudding-

Why it works: Milk and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,685 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Bread Pudding-

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crumbs

  1. Grate the crumbs into a small pudding dish.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the crumbs, cover, and set aside to cool.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg and sugar together until very light.

  2. Stir the egg mixture into the bread and milk when nearly cold.

Bake and serve

  1. Flavor with nutmeg and bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

  2. Serve hot with wine sauce or 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.

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 + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Egg
Sets the custard as it bakes, binding the bread and milk into a soft pudding.
Dry crust crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and provides the liquid that becomes the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten egg become light and airy.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture in when nearly cold. If the milk is still very hot, the egg can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Cooling first lets the egg thicken gently into a smooth custard during baking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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

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