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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with bread crumbs, milk, butter, eggs, raisins, sugar, and nutmeg, topped with a butter-sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. 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.

Make the pudding

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

  2. In a large bowl, combine bread crumbs, nutmeg, milk, soft butter, eggs, raisins, sugar, and salt, and mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  4. Bake for one hour until set and golden.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, melt 1 cup of butter and mix with 1 pound of sugar and a little lemon juice.

  2. Add vanilla or nutmeg for flavoring the sauce.

  3. Serve the bread pudding warm with the sauce drizzled on top.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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 firm as the pudding bakes.
Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the milk to give body.
Milk
Moistens the bread and, with the eggs, forms the custard that sets in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, in the sauce, adds sweetness that balances the butter and lemon.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb and a rich sauce.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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