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Dessert

Baked Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from bread scraps, sugar, currants, suet, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Baked 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 the bread

  1. Cut the bread into small pieces and soak in cold water until soft.

  2. Press out the water and beat the bread finely with a fork.

  3. Wash and dry the currants.

Mix and bake

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg and add it to the bread along with the currants, sugar, spice, and salt, then mix well.

  2. Transfer to a well-greased pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

  3. Serve hot or cold, using dripping instead of suet if served cold.

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. Currant + nutmegtop 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. Sugar + nutmegtop 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

Sugar and nutmeg 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 scraps
Form the soft body of the pudding once soaked and beaten.
Egg (in the method)
Binds the mixture and helps it set as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Currants or sultanas
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.
Suet or dripping
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.

The step that matters

Pressing out the soaking water. Bread that stays waterlogged dilutes the egg and sugar and keeps the pudding soggy and loose. Squeezing out the water lets the mixture bind and set properly when baked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, nutmeg. 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

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