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Dessert

A Cheap Bread-Pudding

A simple bread pudding made with soaked bread, milk, eggs, sugar, dripping, and all-spice, baked until set.

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

A Cheap Bread-Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the bits of bread in cold water overnight or for several hours until covered.

  2. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  3. Grease a baking dish with dripping.

  4. Drain the soaked bread using a colander.

Bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the drained bread with skim milk, eggs, sugar, dripping, and all-spice.

  2. Pour the mixture into the greased dish and bake for less than an hour.

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

Bits of bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the milk mixture into a custard that holds the bread together.
Skim milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface.
Dripping
Adds fat that enriches the flavour and texture of the pudding.

The step that matters

Drain the soaked bread well. Excess soaking water dilutes the milk and eggs, so the custard may set loose and watery. Draining lets the bread absorb the custard mixture evenly.

“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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