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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from sliced bread soaked in milk and eggs, then steamed and served with optional sweet toppings.

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

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a plain mold or basin generously.

  2. Arrange raisins, currants, or dried cherries in a pattern at the bottom and sides of the mold.

Assemble and steam

  1. Cut the baker's roll into slices and layer them in the mold until three-quarters full.

  2. In a bowl, mix the milk, eggs, flour, brown sugar, and salt.

  3. Pour the mixture over the bread until fully absorbed.

  4. Steam the pudding on a plate until heated through.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet sauce and sprinkle with cinnamon or top with marmalade or almonds if desired.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the custard and set it into a soft, sliceable texture as it heats.
Milk
Soaks into the bread to form the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Baker's roll or cake
Provides the bread structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding's shape.
Flour
Thickens the custard slightly so it holds together rather than running apart.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a mild caramel flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the bread until fully absorbed. If the bread is not fully soaked, dry pockets remain and the custard cannot set evenly. Eggs set when heated, so uneven soaking leads to a patchy, crumbly texture after steaming.

“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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