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Dessert

Baked Puddings

A baked pudding made from milk, bread, butter, eggs, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk with laurel leaves, then strain.

  2. Stir in grated bread, butter, and nutmeg.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add beaten egg yolks and egg whites.

  4. Sweeten with brown sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Half fill yellow tea cups with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Serve with sweet sauce in a sauce-tureen.

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

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

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

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

  3. Laurel + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together872 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites bind the custard and help it set as it bakes.
Grated bread
Provides the body of the pudding, soaking up the milk to form a soft crumb.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender texture and flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a mild caramel flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs scrambled into a hot mixture can curdle, leaving lumps instead of a smooth custard. Cooling the base first lets the egg proteins set gently during baking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, laurel, bread, butter, egg, 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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