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Dessert

Little Bread Puddings

A small bread pudding made with grated bread, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and optional currants or candy, baked in tea cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Little Bread Puddings

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.

Make the batter

  1. Soak the grated bread in warm milk until softened.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked bread with beaten eggs, melted butter, sugar, orange-flower water, brandy, nutmeg, and cream.

  3. If using, fold in currants or candy.

  4. Pour the mixture into buttered tea cups.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Serve with pudding sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard by thickening as they heat, giving the pudding its structure.
Bread (in the method)
Absorbs the milk and egg mixture, forming the soft body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides the liquid that the eggs set in.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake only until set. Egg proteins thicken as they heat, but past that point they tighten, squeezing out liquid and turning the pudding grainy and rubbery.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, sugar, brandy, nutmeg, cream. 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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