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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with toasted bread crumbs, sugar, sweet milk, eggs, raisins, currants, nuts, spices, and a nutmeg-flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the pudding

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine the toasted bread crumbs, sugar, sweet milk, baking powder, and eggs.

  3. Stir in the raisins, currants, nuts, and spices.

  4. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  5. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until set.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix flour and water in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add sugar and butter, stirring until thickened.

  3. Flavor the sauce with nutmeg before serving.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Toasted bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk and eggs.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Baking powder
Lightens the pudding by releasing gas that helps it rise.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softens the bread crumbs into a custard-like base.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with water and heat.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Flour must be cooked with liquid over heat and stirred so its starch swells and thickens evenly. Stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste, while letting it sit still can scorch or form lumps.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, milk, egg, raisin, nuts, cinnamon. 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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