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Dessert

Breadcrumb Pudding

A simple pudding made from dried bread, milk, egg, and sugar, boiled or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Breadcrumb Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Place a thin slice of bread in a cool oven until dry and hard.

  2. Roll the dried bread with a glass bottle until finely powdered.

Make the pudding

  1. Pour hot milk over the breadcrumbs.

  2. Add the beaten egg and sugar, and mix well.

  3. Transfer to a buttered basin and boil for about 30 minutes, or bake if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up milk to become soft and tender.
Egg
Binds the mixture and sets when heated, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Softens the dried bread and adds moisture to the finished pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to the pudding's flavour.

The step that matters

Drying and powdering the bread. Bread that is only partly dry absorbs milk unevenly and turns soggy rather than light. Fully dried, finely powdered crumbs soak up the hot milk evenly so the pudding sets with a uniform texture.

“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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