Skip to main content
Dessert

Pecan Pudding

A baked dessert made with butter, sugar, soaked bread, egg yolks, pecans, and beaten egg whites.

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

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 ↓

Pecan 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

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar, soaked bread, egg yolks, and grated pecans; mix well.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-greased mold.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with fruit juice.

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

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

  3. Bread + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped stiff and folded in, they lighten the batter and give the pudding its airy structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Stale white bread
Soaked and drained, it adds body and moisture to the pudding.
Pecan nuts
Grated into the batter, they add nutty flavor and some richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that gives the pudding its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves a dense result.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Pecansfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes