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Dessert

Brown-bread Pudding

A baked pudding made with brown bread crumbs, sugar, whipped cream, lemon peel, cinnamon, cherries, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Brown-bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, sugar, whipped cream, lemon peel, cinnamon, and cherries.

  3. Whip the egg whites until firm and fold them into the mixture.

  4. Grease a round mold and sprinkle some bread crumbs inside.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer the mixture and morel cherries in the mold, alternating as you go.

  2. Bake on a baking sheet until done.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a dish, sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, and pour cherry sauce around it.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites give the pudding lift and a light, airy structure.
Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding and soak up the liquid to hold its shape.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the crumb tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly as it bakes.
Morel cherries
Add fruit flavour and moisture, layered through the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites. Fold gently so the air stays in the mixture. Overmixing deflates the whites, which leaves the pudding dense instead of light.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, cream, cinnamon, egg. 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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