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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from bread crumbs, flour, eggs, raisins, currants, ginger, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare

  1. Mix the bread crumbs and flour with ginger, salt, and sugar to taste.

  2. Add the egg yolks and whites, then enough milk to create a good batter.

  3. Butter a baking dish and pour the mixture into it.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the milk and egg to set into a soft body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the custard set firm when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness so the batter bakes into a set, tender pudding.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds together rather than running loose.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Underbaking leaves the egg-based custard runny in the centre, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery as the egg proteins tighten too far. Check that the centre barely wobbles before removing it.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, egg, raisin, currant, milk, 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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