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Dessert

Boiled Bread Pudding

A boiled pudding made from stale bread soaked in milk and beaten with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the stale bread.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the grated bread and let it soak for 1 hour in a covered bowl.

  3. Beat the soaked mixture with the egg yolks until well combined.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a covered basin that fits snugly, tie it in a cloth, and place it in boiling water.

  2. Cook for 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk to hold its shape.
Hot milk
Softens the bread and provides the liquid that sets the pudding.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness and a custard-like set as they cook.

The step that matters

Cook for 30 minutes. The basin should fit snugly and be covered so steam cooks the custard evenly; if the water stops boiling, the pudding cooks unevenly and may stay wet in the center.

“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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