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Dessert

Bread Pudding, Cream Sauce

A baked bread pudding made with stale bread, currants, eggs, milk, powdered sugar, lemon, and butter, served with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Pudding, Cream Sauce

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

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

  2. Remove the crust from the bread and cut it into ⅓-inch thick slices.

  3. Butter the bread slices and line a deep oval dish with them.

Make and bake the custard

  1. In a bowl, combine currants, eggs, milk, powdered sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Mix the batter well for 2 minutes.

  2. Pour the mixture into the lined dish.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove from the oven.

Serve

  1. Transfer to another dish.

  2. 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Stale bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the bread and cooks into a tender custard.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread slices brown lightly at the edges.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and dissolves smoothly into the milk and eggs.

The step that matters

Mix the batter well for 2 minutes. Thorough mixing evenly distributes the eggs and sugar through the milk so the custard sets uniformly rather than in streaks or pockets.

Swap the currant

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

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

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