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Dessert

Baked Puddings

A baked pudding made from bread, milk, sugar, eggs, candied orange rind, and nutmeg, topped with a whipped egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Baked Puddings

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

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

  2. Warm the butter and place it in a baking dish.

  3. Sift plenty of sugar over the butter.

Make and bake the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread, milk, sugar, egg yolks, candied orange rind, and nutmeg.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.

  3. Bake for 1 hour.

Ice and serve

  1. For icing, beat the egg whites and gradually add sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the icing over the pudding before serving.

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. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the milk and custard to set into a soft crumb.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firm and smooth when baked.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and that the eggs set into custard.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable, glossy meringue icing that holds its peaks.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and, when whipped with egg whites, stabilises the meringue.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the sugar on the dish caramelise and brown.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white icing to stiff peaks. Sugar must be added gradually to fully whipped whites so the foam stays stable. Under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold peaks and the icing will weep or slump on the pudding.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

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