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Dessert

A Richer Bread-Pudding

A moist bread pudding made with milk, cinnamon, lemon peel, bay leaves, butter, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, brandy, and optional currants.

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

A Richer Bread-Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the milk with cinnamon, lemon peel, and bay leaves.

  2. Stir in the butter and pour over enough grated bread to soak up the milk.

  3. Cover and let it stand for 1 hour.

Make the mixture

  1. Remove the cinnamon, bay leaves, and lemon peel.

  2. Beat the mixture and add sugar, nutmeg, eggs, and brandy.

  3. If desired, mix in currants.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Serve with wine or brandy 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a soft, sliceable pudding when heated.
Grated bread
Absorbs the milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Powdered loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices.
Nutmeg
Adds warm aroma to the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Egg proteins set gently as they heat. If the mixture cooks too fiercely, the eggs can curdle and turn grainy, so the pudding should be kept at a steady, controlled heat for the full time.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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