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Dessert

College Pudding

A sweet bread pudding made with milk, butter, sugar, bread crumbs, candied peel, eggs, and flavored with brandy, sherry, or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

College Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard base

  1. Combine milk, butter, and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the boiling mixture over the bread crumbs.

  3. Add the candied peel, cut into tiny pieces.

  4. Beat the eggs well and stir them into the mixture.

  5. Flavor with a little brandy, sherry, or vanilla.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill well-buttered cups three-quarters full and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

  2. Serve with sifted sugar and sherry.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a tender, custardy structure as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk mixture to form the body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides moisture and softens the crumbs, helping the pudding stay tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft texture, and helps the cups brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface.
Candied peel
Adds concentrated citrus sweetness and aroma throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Filling the cups and baking. Filling the cups only three-quarters full leaves room for the eggs to rise and set without overflowing. Baking until golden brown means the eggs are set and the surface has browned, so the pudding is cooked through rather than wet in the centre.

“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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