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Dessert

Baked Bread Pudding

A sweet pudding made from stale bread, currants, raisins, sugar, fat, spices, eggs, and water, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the bread

  1. Soak the stale bread in water, then drain it well.

  2. Beat the bread with a fork until smooth.

Make the mixture

  1. Add currants, raisins, sugar, melted fat, nutmeg, cinnamon, eggs, and water, then mix well.

  2. Grease a dish and pour the mixture into it.

Top and bake

  1. Cut orange or lemon peel and a few almonds, then place them on top.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until set.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Soaked and beaten, it becomes a moist base that holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Their proteins set on baking, binding the pudding into a sliceable texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Melted fat
Coats the crumb with richness, making the texture softer and more tender.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. The eggs set as their proteins coagulate on heating. If the pudding is pulled before it sets, the centre stays loose and watery and will not hold its shape when cut.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, egg, orange. 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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