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Dessert

Baked Puddings

A baked dessert of bread and butter soaked in a milk, almond, and egg custard, sweetened with sugar and flavored with lemon rind.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard

  1. Simmer the milk with the lemon rind and bruised almonds (or cinnamon) for 10 to 20 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, combine the milk mixture with sugar, eggs, and brandy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the bread and butter in a baking dish, adding currants and candied rind between layers.

  2. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the bread layers, allowing it to soak for 2 hours.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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

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

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so it holds together as the pudding bakes.
Milk
Forms the custard base and moistens the bread as it soaks.
Bread
Provides the structure that soaks up the custard and holds its shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown during baking.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness distributed through the layers.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread. Allowing the custard to soak for the full 2 hours lets the bread absorb the liquid evenly. Under-soaked bread stays dry in patches, while the eggs in the custard set during baking to give a uniform, tender texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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