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Dessert

Sugarless Bread Pudding

A moist pudding made from bread crumbs, milk, eggs, butter, spices, and baking soda, baked until set.

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

Sugarless Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in milk.

  2. Beat the eggs separately until light and fluffy.

  3. Add melted butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg to the soaked crumbs.

  4. Dissolve baking soda in hot water and mix into the crumbs.

  5. Stir in the beaten eggs and mix well for one minute.

Bake

  1. Pour into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake until light brown and set in the middle.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and form the soft, custard-like body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it structure.
Milk
Soaks the crumbs and supplies moisture that the eggs set into a custard.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten slightly.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender texture and flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until set in the middle. Eggs set as they heat past about 70°C (160°F). Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny in the center, while overbaking makes the eggs curdle and turn grainy and dry.

“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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