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Dessert

Baked Puddings

A baked bread pudding made with milk, lemon rind, almonds, currants, candied rind, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard

  1. Simmer the milk, lemon rind, and bruised almonds (or cinnamon) for 10 to 20 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, combine the cream, sugar, eggs, and brandy.

Assemble and soak

  1. Layer the bread and butter in a baking dish, adding currants and candied rind between layers.

  2. Pour the milk mixture over the bread layers, allowing it to soak for 2 hours.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the pudding into a sliceable, tender structure.
Bread and butter
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up custard and holding its shape.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that soaks into the bread and sets with the eggs.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, silkier texture to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps with browning on the surface.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Pour the milk mixture over the bread layers and let it soak. Bread must absorb the custard evenly before baking; dry patches stay firm and unset, while over-soaked bread turns soggy and loses its structure in the oven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, almond, cream, sugar, egg, brandy, bread):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, almond, cream, sugar, egg, brandy, bread. 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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