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Dessert

Brown Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made from stale brown bread crumbs, raisins, spices, egg, milk, and sweetener.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Brown Bread Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Brown 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

  1. Soak the brown bread crumbs in water until nearly covered.

  2. In a bowl, combine the soaked bread crumbs, raisins, cinnamon, ground cloves, grated nutmeg, beaten egg, and milk.

  3. Sweeten the mixture with table syrup or brown sugar to your liking.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1½ hours.

  3. Serve hot or cold, with or without 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.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale brown bread crumbs
Form the body of the pudding, soaking up liquid to set into a soft, tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the mixture and helps it set firm as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the bread and helping the custard set.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Table syrup or brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread crumbs. The crumbs must absorb the water evenly without becoming soggy or waterlogged. Too much liquid leaves a dense, wet texture, while too little leaves dry, crumbly bread that does not bind with the egg and milk.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits less well

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