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Dessert

Bread Pudding

Bread pudding made with sweet milk, bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, raisins, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Milk and bread 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 ↓

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 the custard base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in ½ quart of milk until soft.

  2. Mash the soaked bread crumbs finely.

  3. Add the remaining milk, beaten eggs, sugar, and raisins.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  2. Serve warm with warm 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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a sliceable custard as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the milk and form the soft, absorbent body of the pudding.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that moistens the bread and sets with the eggs into custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Raisins
Add pockets of chewy sweetness distributed through the pudding.

The step that matters

Mashing the soaked bread crumbs finely. Fine, evenly broken bread absorbs the milk uniformly, so the pudding bakes into a smooth custard rather than having dry lumps or soggy patches.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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