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Dessert

New England Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, milk, sugar, bread crumbs, and butter or oil, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coconut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,648 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

New England 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a three-quart pudding dish, break the eggs and beat until light.

Make the custard

  1. Add salt, sugar, bread crumbs, milk, and coconut butter or olive oil.

  2. Mix well until combined.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until set and golden brown.

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. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Bread + coconuttop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together112 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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
Set the custard and bind the bread crumbs into a sliceable pudding.
Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body that soak up the custard as it bakes.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that forms the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Coconut butter or olive oil
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden brown. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the custard runny in the center, while overbaking can make it curdled, dry, or rubbery.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Coconutthe original

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