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Dessert

Bedford Pudding

A baked bread pudding made with milk, eggs, sugar, lemon peel, jam, and topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bedford 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 base

  1. Soak the bread in cold water until soft, then squeeze out all the water.

  2. Place the bread in a bowl and beat it smooth with a spoon.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks, sugar, milk, and a little grated lemon peel.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until firm.

  2. Remove from the oven and spread jam on top.

  3. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and spread over the jam.

  4. Return to the oven for a few minutes until browned, then sprinkle with sugar and serve hot or 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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Dry bread crusts
Soaked and beaten, they form the soft body of the pudding.
Eggs
Yolks set the custard and give it richness; whites whip into a light topping.
Milk
Provides the liquid that thins the bread and sets with the eggs into a custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Jam
Adds a sweet, fruity layer between the custard and the meringue.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites only hold their volume when beaten to stiff peaks with no yolk or grease present. Underwhipped whites slump into the jam, and overbeaten whites turn grainy and weep, so the topping may not brown evenly or stay light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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