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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A custard-like dessert made from bread crumbs, milk, lemon peel, spices, sugar, and eggs, baked or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Bread Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

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.

Make the base

  1. Combine the bread crumbs with enough milk to cover them in a stew-pan.

  2. Add the lemon peel, grated nutmeg, and cinnamon.

  3. Boil for about 10 minutes.

  4. Sweeten with powdered sugar to taste.

  5. Remove the cinnamon.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat in the eggs until well combined.

  2. Transfer to a baking dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Alternatively, boil for slightly more than 1 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding, soaking up milk to create a soft, spoonable base.
Milk
Softens the bread crumbs and provides moisture for a tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during cooking to give the pudding its custard-like structure.
Powdered loaf sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs until well combined. Eggs must be evenly distributed so the pudding sets uniformly. Eggs cooked too hot or too long can curdle or turn rubbery, so the pudding should be baked gently until just set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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