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Dessert

Bread Puddings

A sweet pudding made from penny loaf crumbs soaked in milk, butter, eggs, rose water, nutmeg, salt, and sugar, boiled and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Bread Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the bread

  1. Cut the crumb of the penny loaf into thin slices and soak it in 1 quart of milk over a low heat until the bread absorbs the milk.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of butter and stir.

  3. Let it cool.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Pour the boiled milk over the bread.

  3. Cover the mixture tightly.

  4. Beat the yolks of 6 eggs and the whites of 3 with 1 teaspoon of rose water, 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 cup of sugar.

  5. Mix everything well.

  6. Place the mixture in a cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 1 hour.

  2. Serve hot.

  3. Pour melted butter over it.

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. Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Penny loaf crumb
Soaks up the milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that the bread absorbs, keeping the pudding moist.
Egg yolks and whites
Set with heat to bind the pudding into a tender, custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps balance the eggs and milk.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour. Egg proteins set as they heat, so the pudding needs steady, gentle heat for the full time to firm up smoothly. Heat that is too vigorous can make the egg mixture grainy or rubbery.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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