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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made from grated bread soaked in milk, eggs, and spices, then boiled and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Pour boiling milk over grated bread and cover tightly.

  2. Let it soak for 1-2 hours.

  3. Beat the soaked mixture until fine.

Mix and boil

  1. Mix in eggs, flour, butter, sugar, currants, almonds, orange-flower water, and zests.

  2. Butter a basin that will just hold the mixture and flour a cloth.

  3. Tie the cloth tightly over the basin and boil in water for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter poured 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.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Grated bread
Soaked in milk, it forms the soft, absorbent body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when cooked, binding the mixture and giving it structure.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture to the pudding.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and gives it a firmer texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender crumb and flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the citrus zests.

The step that matters

Tie the cloth tightly over the basin. A loose cloth lets water seep in during boiling, making the pudding soggy and diluting its flavor. A tight seal keeps the pudding moist and holds its shape as it cooks.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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