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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with soaked bread crumbs, sweet milk, eggs, sugar, lemon peel, raisins, baked and topped with meringue.

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 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in sweet milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with powdered sugar and lemon peel, then stir into the soaked bread crumbs.

  3. Add raisins and pour the mixture into a greased pudding dish.

Bake and top

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, adding ½ cup of powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture on top of the pudding and return to the oven until lightly browned.

  4. Serve hot or cold with jelly sauce or whipped 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set the custard when baked and, as whites, form the light meringue topping.
Sweet milk
Moistens the bread and forms the custard that sets in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and stiffens the egg whites for the topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks and no yolk is mixed in, since fat from yolk or residue prevents foam from stabilising. Well-beaten whites hold air, giving the topping its light texture and allowing it to brown without collapsing.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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