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Dessert

Bread Pudding

A baked dessert made with bread crumbs, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

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 custard base

  1. Soak the bread crumbs in the scalded milk and set aside to cool.

  2. Add the sugar, melted butter, slightly beaten egg yolks, salt, raisins, and vanilla to the cooled mixture.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish, cover, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve with sauce.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and form the soft, absorbent body of the pudding.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and richness.
Milk
Softens the bread and provides moisture that cooks into a tender custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the custard tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, softer crumb and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only while they stay stiff, so folding gently keeps the mixture light. Deflating them by overmixing leaves a denser pudding that rises less in the oven.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

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

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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