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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A pudding made from penny loaf crumbs soaked in milk, butter, eggs, rose water, nutmeg, salt, and sugar, boiled for an hour.

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

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the crumb of the penny loaf into very thin slices.

  2. Soak the bread in a quart of milk over a chafing dish until the milk is absorbed. Alternatively, pour boiling milk over the bread and cover until cool.

  3. Add a piece of butter and stir until combined.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Make the pudding

  1. Beat the yolks of six eggs and the whites of three with rose water, nutmeg, salt, and sugar.

  2. Mix everything together.

  3. Place the mixture in a cloth, tying it loosely to allow for expansion.

  4. Boil for one hour.

Serve

  1. Serve the pudding.

  2. Pour melted butter over it.

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. Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Penny loaf crumb
Forms the bulk of the pudding and absorbs the milk and egg mixture.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and supplies the liquid that sets with the eggs.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a tender, rich texture.
Egg whites
Add lift and structure as they set during boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning at the surface.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth loosely. The pudding expands as it heats, so a loose cloth gives room to rise. A tight tie can squeeze the pudding and make it dense or split the cloth.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, rose, sugar. 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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