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Dessert

Fruit Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk-soaked bread crumbs, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, and butter.

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

Fruit 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 batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until light.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk, then stir until smooth.

  4. Add the soaked bread crumbs to the egg mixture.

  5. Dredge the fruit in flour and add it to the mixture along with the dissolved baking soda.

  6. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake until set, covering if the top browns too quickly.

  3. Serve warm with pudding 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.

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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whipped whites lighten it and help it set.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs and softens the bread.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chew, and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the pudding.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot water to lighten the batter and aid rising.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and keeps the baking dish from sticking.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lightens the pudding. Overmixing deflates them, and the custard then bakes dense rather than tender.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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