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Bread Puddings

A custard-like pudding made from milk, bread, eggs, sugar, spices, and optional ingredients.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Boil enough milk for your dish with flavorings.

  2. Cut the bread into thin slices.

  3. Remove any laurel leaves.

  4. Add the bread to the boiling milk.

  5. Let it sit for a few minutes to swell.

  6. Beat it up fine.

Make the mixture

  1. Stir in the beaten eggs, moist sugar, allspice or nutmeg, and butter or suet.

  2. If using, add currants carefully to avoid curdling the milk.

  3. Use only breadcrumbs and rich new milk for a delicate pudding.

  4. Sweeten moderately with loaf sugar and grate in nutmeg.

  5. For added richness, mix in cream, butter, almonds, and ratafia or brandy.

Bake or boil

  1. Bake for less than an hour until lightly browned.

  2. Butter a basin and boil for 20 to 50 minutes, depending on size.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and give the pudding its structure as they cook.
Bread
Soaks up the hot milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides the liquid that the eggs set in.
Butter or suet
Adds fat, which gives the pudding a richer, softer texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface during baking.

The step that matters

Add the currants carefully. Adding cold or unmixed fruit to hot milk and beaten eggs can make the custard curdle, so the currants should be stirred in gently as the record advises.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, egg, sugar, allspice, butter, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, egg, sugar, allspice, butter, nutmeg. 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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