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Dessert

Plain Bread Pudding

A simple bread pudding made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Plain Bread Pudding

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 ↓

Plain Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the bread

  1. Combine the bread crumbs in a basin.

  2. Pour the boiling milk over the bread crumbs.

  3. Cover the basin with a plate to retain steam.

  4. Let the mixture sit for 20 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. Mix in the sugar and nutmeg until smooth.

  2. Beat the eggs in a separate plate.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture and stir well.

Cook

  1. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered and floured mold.

  2. Cover the mold with a cloth.

  3. Boil for 1 hour.

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

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 crumbs
Absorb the hot milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides moisture for a tender set.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Letting the bread soak. The bread must fully absorb the hot milk for the pudding to cook evenly and become tender rather than lumpy or dry. Resting for the full time lets the crumbs swell before the eggs are added.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

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

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