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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made with bread, milk, eggs, rose water, and preserved fruit, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

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 the bread

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices and place them in a dish.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the bread and let it cool.

  3. Mash the bread once cooled.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer preserved gooseberries in the bottom of a pudding dish.

  2. Add the mashed bread on top of the gooseberries.

  3. Sweeten the good milk.

  4. Mix the sweetened milk with the beaten eggs and rose water.

  5. Pour the mixture over the bread.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  7. Grate nutmeg over the top before serving.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaked in hot milk, then mashed, it forms the soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the milk and bread into a custard-like texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard with the eggs.
Preserved gooseberries
Add tart fruit flavour that contrasts with the sweetened custard.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling milk over the bread and let it cool. The bread must absorb the hot milk fully and cool before mashing, so it blends evenly into the custard rather than leaving dry or lumpy pockets.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, rose, currant, brandy):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, rose, currant, brandy. 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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