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Dessert

A Good Baked Bread Pudding

A sweet bread pudding made with bread crumbs, butter, milk, sugar, eggs, candied orange rind, and nutmeg, topped with frothy egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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A Good Baked 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 ↓

A Good Baked Bread 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.

Soak and mix

  1. Pour boiling milk over the bread crumbs and butter in a bowl.

  2. Cover and let stand until the bread is well soaked.

  3. Stir in sugar, egg yolks, candied orange rind, and nutmeg until combined.

Cool and fill

  1. Let the mixture cool.

  2. Pour it into a baking dish.

Ice and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy, then mix in sifted sugar.

  2. Spread over the pudding.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides moisture and the liquid that sets into a custard with the eggs.
Eggs
Set the custard when baked, and the whites are whipped to make the icing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the icing hold its texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool.. Adding the egg mixture to a very hot base can scramble the eggs and make the custard grainy. Cooling it first lets the eggs set smoothly during baking.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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

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