Skip to main content
Dessert

Baked Puddings

A sweet bread pudding made with bread, butter, milk, eggs, sugar, candied orange rind, and nutmeg, topped with a whipped egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Baked Puddings

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the torn bread in a baking dish.

  3. Melt the butter and pour it over the bread.

  4. Sprinkle the sugar over the buttered bread.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the milk, egg yolks, nutmeg, and candied orange rind.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bread in the baking dish.

Ice and bake

  1. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold in the sugar for the icing.

  3. Spread the icing over the pudding.

  4. Bake for 1 hour until set and golden.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding together.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, giving a rich, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that softens the bread and sets with the eggs into custard.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to make a light icing that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the icing brown during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor into the bread.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be beaten until stiff and then folded gently, because over-mixing deflates the foam and the icing loses its airy structure in the oven.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipes