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Dessert

Bread Puddings

A custard-like dish made by soaking sliced bread in milk, eggs, sugar, spices, and butter, then baking or boiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil enough milk for your dish with flavorings.

  2. Cut the bread into thin slices.

  3. Once the milk boils, remove any laurel leaves.

  4. Add the bread to the boiling milk.

  5. Let it sit for a few minutes to swell.

  6. Beat the mixture up fine.

Make the mixture

  1. Stir in the beaten eggs, moist sugar, allspice or nutmeg, and butter.

  2. If using, add currants carefully to avoid curdling the milk.

  3. For a delicate pudding, use only bread crumbs and rich new milk.

  4. For every tablespoon of bread, add one egg and sweeten with loaf sugar.

  5. Grate a little nutmeg and butter a basin.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the mixture for 20 to 50 minutes, depending on the size.

  2. Bake until lightly browned.

  3. For enrichment, add cream, chopped almonds, and ratafia or brandy.

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

  4. Allspice + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Soaks up the milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and forms the liquid base that sets when cooked.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving a firm, custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving a softer, more tender texture.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps it take on a light browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the currants. The record warns to add currants carefully to avoid curdling the milk. Eggs in milk thicken when heated, so a rough addition can break the mixture into curds.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, egg, sugar, allspice, butter, nutmeg):

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

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

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

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