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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding base

  1. Combine scalded milk and bread crumbs in a bowl.

  2. Add beaten egg yolks, teacup of sugar, egg-sized piece of butter, and grated rind of 1 lemon; mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff, then gradually add cup of powdered sugar and juice of 1 lemon.

  2. Spread the egg white mixture over the pudding and return to the oven until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 hot milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Set the custard so the pudding holds together when baked.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff meringue that bakes to a golden, airy topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps it stay smooth and glossy.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to firm peaks before the sugar and lemon juice are folded in. Under-whipped whites deflate and weep on the pudding, while over-whipped whites turn dry and grainy and brown unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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