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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from dried bread, egg, milk, sugar, butter, lemon juice, and topped with jelly or jam.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Beat the yolk of the egg with enough milk to cover the bread and sweeten to taste.

  3. Add the dried bread and pieces of butter to the mixture.

  4. Bake for 20 minutes.

Top and brown

  1. Spread jelly or jam on top, then beat the egg white with 1 tablespoon of sugar and the lemon juice.

  2. Fold the egg white mixture into the pudding and return to the oven to brown.

  3. Serve with 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. 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Dried bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk custard.
Egg
The yolk thickens the custard, and the beaten white adds lightness to the topping.
Milk
Makes the custard base that soaks into the bread and sets when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Jelly or jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour over the pudding.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet flavours and stabilises the beaten egg white.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg white into the pudding. Egg white holds air only while whipped, so it should be folded in gently rather than stirred. Overmixing deflates the foam and makes the topping dense instead of light and browned.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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