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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A pudding of bread soaked in spiced milk, mixed with eggs, sugar, currants and lemon peel, then baked or boiled.

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

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 ↓

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 custard base

  1. Boil the milk with the butter and mace.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the tea-cakes or French roll and let it cool.

  3. Beat in the eggs, sugar, currants, lemon peel, and salt until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) or boil it.

  2. If baked, turn it out of the dish before serving.

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

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

  2. Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 firm, sliceable pudding as they cook.
Tea-cakes or french roll
Absorb the hot milk and form the soft, bready body of the pudding.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and provides the liquid that gives a custard-like moisture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface when baked.

The step that matters

Let the bread soak after pouring the hot milk. The bread needs time to absorb the liquid evenly; if it is still dry in spots, the pudding will bake unevenly and have pockets of dry crumb. Letting the mixture cool before adding the eggs also keeps them from scrambling.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, tea, egg, sugar, currant, lemon. 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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