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Dessert

Baked Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with grated bread, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, candied peel, bitter almonds, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

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.

Prepare the custard base

  1. Combine milk and bitter almonds in a saucepan; let infuse for 1 hour.

  2. Bring the milk to a boil, then strain it over the breadcrumbs and let cool.

  3. Whisk the eggs in a bowl, then add them to the cooled mixture along with the butter, sugar, and brandy; mix well.

Bake

  1. Line the bottom of a pie dish with thinly sliced candied peel, pour in the mixture, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for nearly 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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard as it bakes.
Grated bread
Absorbs the milk and provides the body of the pudding.
Milk
Soaks into the breadcrumbs and forms the liquid base of the custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooling the infused milk before adding the eggs. Hot milk poured onto beaten eggs can scramble them, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard. Letting the mixture cool first lets the eggs thicken gently during baking.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Walnutfits less well

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