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Bread

Queen of Bread Puddings

A custard-like bread pudding made with breadcrumbs, milk, butter, sugar, lemon, and egg, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Queen of Bread Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine milk, butter, breadcrumbs, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Heat slowly until boiling.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice, lemon rind, and egg yolk.

  4. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish and bake for 10 minutes.

Make the topping and finish

  1. Whip the egg white until stiff.

  2. Gently fold in 2 teaspoons of sugar.

  3. Spoon the whipped egg white in rocky heaps on top of the pudding.

  4. Bake for an additional 4 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.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Breadcrumbs
Absorb the milk and form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Milk
Supplies moisture and softens the crumbs into a custard-like base.
Egg
Binds the base and helps it set as it bakes; the white also builds the topping.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the whipped egg white topping.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma that cut through the richness.

The step that matters

Whip the egg white until stiff. Egg white needs to be whipped to stiff peaks to hold its air. Underwhipped, the heaps will slump; overwhipped, it turns grainy and dry and may not bake smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, 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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