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Dessert

Plain Bread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, egg, butter, and vanilla, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Plain 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 ↓

Plain Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Add bread crumbs to hot milk and let stand until very soft.

  2. Beat the egg slightly, then add sugar, salt, and the milk mixture; beat until very smooth.

  3. Stir in the butter and vanilla extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake at 325°F (165°C) until firm: about 1 hour for a large dish or 20 minutes for individual servings.

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Eggs
Egg proteins set as the custard bakes, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the body of the pudding, giving it a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the bread soaks in and sets with the egg into a custard.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender texture and a rounder flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds flavor to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until firm. Egg proteins set gradually with heat. Underbaking leaves the custard loose and wet in the center, while overbaking can make it curdled, dense, or rubbery.

“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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