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Dessert

Walnut Bread Pudding

A sweet bread pudding made with torn bread, milk, walnuts, vanilla, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Walnut Bread 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the torn bread and milk; let it soak for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the chopped walnuts, sugar, vanilla, and eggs; mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until set and golden on top.

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

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

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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).

Vanilla and sugar 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

Bread
Soaks up the milk and forms the soft, custard-like body of the pudding.
Milk
Moistens the bread and, with the eggs, sets into a custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a tender, sliceable structure.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasted, nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs set as they heat, so pulling the pudding too early leaves it loose in the centre, while baking too long dries it out. Check for a firm centre and a golden top.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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

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