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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made from soaked bread, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and optional nutmeg.

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

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.

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in 2 quarts of milk until well absorbed.

  2. Beat the soaked mixture vigorously.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sugar and butter.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the soaked bread mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a pudding pan and pour the mixture in.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  3. Grate nutmeg on top before serving, if desired.

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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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).

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 body of the pudding.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and provides the liquid that sets into custard.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, custardy texture when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the surface of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Combining the egg mixture with the soaked bread. Mixing the eggs in gently and fully keeps the custard evenly distributed, so the pudding sets smoothly rather than in curds or pockets of plain bread.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, coffee, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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