Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread Pudding

A moist pudding made from stale bread, milk, eggs, currants, candied peel, butter, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon peel, steamed or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 ↓

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.

Soak and mix

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the broken bread in a bowl.

  2. Cover for 10-15 minutes to allow the bread to swell.

  3. Mash the bread to make a fine pulp and stir in the butter or suet.

  4. Beat the eggs with a little cinnamon, grated lemon peel, and sugar to taste.

  5. Combine all ingredients, adding the candied peel and cleaned currants.

Shape and steam

  1. Place the mixture in a well-buttered pudding basin.

  2. Cover with buttered paper.

  3. Set the basin in a saucepan with boiling water up to ¾ of the basin.

  4. Cover and steam for 1 hour, adding more water as needed.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. Sift sugar over the pudding and serve hot or cold.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Bind the mixture and set it into a tender, sliceable custard as they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the bread so it breaks down into a pulp.
Stale bread
Provides the body of the pudding, absorbing the milk and holding its structure.
Butter or suet
Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the eggs and fat.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Keeping the water bath topped up while steaming. Gentle, moist heat from the water bath lets the eggs set evenly without drying or curdling the edges. If the water boils away, the pudding's outer layer can overcook and turn dry, so keep the level at about ¾ of the basin.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes