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Dessert

Plain Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Plain Bread Pudding

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plain Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the crumbs

  1. Place bread crumbs in a basin and pour boiling milk over them.

  2. Cover with a plate to retain steam and let sit for 20 minutes.

Mix and cook

  1. Beat the mixture until smooth, then add sugar and nutmeg.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add to the pudding mixture.

  3. Stir everything together and pour into a well-buttered mold.

  4. Cover the mold with a cloth and boil for 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the soft, spongy body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set during cooking to bind the pudding and give it structure.
Milk
Softens the crumbs and provides moisture for a tender custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Cover the mold with a cloth and boil for 1 hour. Cooking the eggs gently in steam-filled water keeps the pudding tender. Boiling too vigorously can make the texture rough and porous, so the water should stay at a steady simmer.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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