Skip to main content
Main

Savoury Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made from crumbled French roll soaked in beef tea, eggs, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Savoury Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pour the boiling beef tea over the crumb of the French roll.

  2. Beat well and let it soak for 30 minutes.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and boiling milk, then season with pepper and salt.

  4. Beat the mixture for 5 minutes.

  5. If desired, add the boiled and mashed onion before baking.

Bake

  1. Put the pudding into a buttered tart dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

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.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tea + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

French roll
Its crumb absorbs the beef tea and milk, forming the soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
They bind the soaked crumb and set during baking to give the pudding its structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the baked pudding tender rather than dry.
Beef tea
Soaks into the bread and supplies the savory flavour base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Soaking the crumb. The crumb needs time to absorb the hot beef tea fully, so the bread softens evenly before the eggs and milk are added. Under-soaked crumb leaves dry, uneven patches in the baked pudding.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tea, egg, milk, pepper, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tea, egg, milk, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes