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Dessert

A Family Bread Pudding

A moist bread pudding made with boiled milk, stale bread, eggs, spices, raisins, and buttered bread topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Family Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the custard base

  1. Soak the bread pieces in boiling milk until softened.

  2. Beat the soaked bread and add the second pint of boiled milk with cloves, mace, and lemon peel.

  3. Mix in the yolks and whites of the beaten eggs.

  4. Stir in the currants or sultana raisins.

Bake

  1. Top with thin slices of buttered bread, sprinkle with currants and nutmeg.

  2. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) for one 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 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

Stale bread
Soaks up the hot milk and forms the soft, absorbent body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and sets into a tender custard.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a custard-like texture.
Currants or sultana raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread in boiling milk. The bread must be fully softened so it breaks down and absorbs the custard evenly. Dry or unsoaked pieces stay firm and leave uneven texture after baking.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, clove, mace, lemon, egg, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, clove, mace, lemon, egg, nutmeg. 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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