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Dessert

Plain Bread Pudding, Baked

A baked pudding made from stale bread soaked in milk, butter, spices, sugar, eggs, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Plain Bread Pudding, Baked

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Bread Pudding, Baked

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 custard base

  1. Break the stale bread into pieces and place in a bowl.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the bread and add the butter.

  3. Cover the dish tightly and let it cool.

  4. Mash the mixture until fine with a spoon.

  5. Stir in the cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and baking soda dissolved in a little hot water.

  6. Beat the eggs until light and add them to the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour everything into a well-buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve warm with hard sauce.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 bread
Soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding into a sliceable custard.
Milk
Softens the bread and forms the liquid that the eggs set into custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the texture.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until light and add them to the mixture.. Eggs are the main setting agent. Well-beaten eggs blend evenly into the cooled bread mixture, so the pudding sets smoothly instead of in streaks or curds.

“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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