Skip to main content
Bread

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with milk, bread crumbs, butter, eggs, sugar, and a sauce of sugar, butter, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Make the pudding

  1. Heat the milk and bread crumbs in a pot on the stove.

  2. Add the baking soda and egg yolks, mixing well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the boiling water to the sauce mixture and stir.

  3. Just before serving, mix in 1 egg into the sauce.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the custard, while whipped whites lighten its texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the soft, starchy body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and sets into a custard when cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the sauce and helps it stay smooth when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce when creamed.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to lighten the pudding and help it rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Folding gently keeps the whipped whites' air intact, so the pudding stays light instead of deflating into a dense custard.

“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 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipes