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Dessert

Baked Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from stale bread, sugar, currants, suet, egg, and spices, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Baked 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 stale bread into small pieces.

  2. Soak the pieces in cold water until soft.

  3. Press out all the water.

  4. Beat the bread with a fork.

Prepare the fruit and egg

  1. Wash the currants.

  2. Dry the currants.

  3. Beat the egg.

  4. Add the beaten egg to the bread mixture.

Mix, bake and serve

  1. Add currants, sugar, spice, salt, and milk if using. Mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-greased baking tin.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  4. Serve hot or cold.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up moisture and holding its shape when softened.
Egg
Binds the bread and other ingredients together and helps the pudding set as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat, giving a richer, moister crumb as it melts during baking.

The step that matters

Press out all the water from the soaked bread. Excess water dilutes the egg and sugar and stops the pudding from setting properly, leaving it soggy and loose in the centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, nutmeg, milk. 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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