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Dessert

Very Plain Bread Pudding

A simple bread pudding made with soaked bread, water, salt, nutmeg, sugar, currants, and butter, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,997 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Very Plain Bread Pudding

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 bread

  1. Break the bread into small pieces and pour boiling water over them until soaked.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then press out excess water and mash the bread with a fork.

Mix and bake

  1. Measure the bread pulp and stir in salt, nutmeg, sugar, and currants.

  2. Mix everything well and transfer to a well-buttered dish.

  3. Smooth the surface with the back of a spoon and dot with small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours and serve hot.

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 + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Nutmeg + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

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

  3. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Nutmeg and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up liquid and setting into a soft, moist crumb.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Pressing out the excess water. Bread that stays too wet will bake into a heavy, soggy pudding that does not set properly. Squeezing out the soaking water lets the mashed bread hold its shape and texture once baked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg, 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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