Skip to main content
Dessert

Common Bread Pudding

A simple pudding made by soaking bread in boiling milk, adding eggs, and boiling until set, served with sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and bread 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 ↓

Common Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the bread

  1. Pour boiling milk over enough bread pieces to soak up the milk.

  2. Cover with a plate.

  3. Let it stand until cool.

Mix and cook

  1. Mash the soaked bread.

  2. Add the beaten eggs. Mix well.

  3. Place in a floured, wet cloth.

  4. Boil for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with sweet sauce.

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 + breadtop 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. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + saucetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Absorbs the hot milk and forms the soft, starchy body of the pudding.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and provides moisture so the pudding stays tender.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding its firm texture.

The step that matters

Mix well after adding the eggs. Beaten eggs must be evenly distributed through the mashed bread so the pudding sets uniformly rather than in pockets of scrambled egg or loose, wet bread.

“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

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

You might also like

Soft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBread Crumb CakesBread Crumb Cakes30 recipesGingerbreadGingerbread25 recipes