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Dessert

Brown Bread Pudding

A steamed pudding made from stale brown bread soaked in boiling milk, sweetened with brown sugar, lemon rind, vanilla, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Brown Bread Pudding

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Brown Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Break the stale brown bread into very small pieces and place in a basin.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the bread and let it soak until soft.

  3. Squeeze the soaked bread dry and beat it well with a fork, removing any hard pieces.

Mix the batter

  1. Add the brown sugar, lemon rind, and vanilla essence, and mix thoroughly.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered pint mold, cover with greased paper, and steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. Turn the pudding onto a hot dish and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  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. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Stale brown bread
Provides the bulk and structure that the soaked milk and eggs bind together.
Boiling milk
Softens the bread so it can be mashed and absorbs moisture for a tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming, giving the pudding its body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour.
Lemon rind
Adds fragrant citrus aroma that brightens the sweet, rich mixture.

The step that matters

Squeeze the soaked bread dry. Excess soaking liquid left in the bread would make the pudding wet and loose, so it may not set properly during steaming.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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