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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from stale bread soaked in milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and optionally orange juice and currants.

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

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 ↓

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.

Make the pudding

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in boiling milk for 10 minutes to allow them to swell.

  2. Mix in a bit of butter until well combined.

  3. Beat the eggs and sugar together, then stir into the bread mixture.

  4. Add orange juice and currants if desired.

Bake or boil

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) or boil until set.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Its absorbent crumb soaks up the milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and creates the custard that sets around it.
Eggs
Coagulate when heated, binding the pudding and giving it a set, custardy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and contributes to browning on the surface.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake or boil until set. Eggs set when heated to the right point; underheating leaves the custard runny, while overheating can make it curdle, weep, or turn rubbery.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, egg, sugar, currant):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

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