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Cheese Pudding

A savory cheese pudding made with stale bread crumbs, milk, cheese, egg, and butter, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cheese Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Crumble the stale bread into fine crumbs.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the crumbs and let them soak.

  3. Beat the soaked crumbs with a fork.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix in the grated cheese, pepper, salt, and beaten egg.

  2. Pour the mixture into a small pie dish.

  3. Melt the butter and pour it over the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and serve very hot.

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. 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 + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the pudding and soak up the milk to create a soft body.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides moisture so the custard-like mixture can set.
Grated cheese
Adds rich flavour and fat, and melts into the mixture as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the mixture and sets on baking to give the pudding its firm structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Let the crumbs soak fully before beating. Bread that is not fully saturated stays dry and lumpy, so the egg cannot distribute evenly and the pudding sets unevenly.

“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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