Skip to main content
Dessert

Little Bread Puddings

A small bread pudding made with grated loaf, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, orange‑flower water, brandy, nutmeg, and cream, baked in tea cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Little Bread Puddings

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

  1. Soak the grated bread in warm milk until softened.

  2. In a bowl, mix the soaked bread with beaten eggs, melted butter, sugar, orange-flower water, brandy, nutmeg, and cream.

  3. If using, fold in currants or orange/lemon candy.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered tea cups.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  3. Serve with pudding sauce.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Penny loaf
Bread soaked in milk forms the body of the pudding once the custard sets.
Eggs
Coagulate when baked, setting the custard and holding the pudding together.
Milk
Softens the bread and forms the liquid base of the custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny centre while overbaking can make the custard curdle and turn rubbery. Check for a set centre rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, sugar, brandy, nutmeg, cream. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes