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Dessert

Fruit Bread Pudding

A baked pudding made from milk-soaked bread crumbs, eggs, sugar, fruit, 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

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

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar until light.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in the milk, then add to the egg mixture and stir until smooth.

Make the pudding

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

  2. Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth and fold them into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  4. Bake for longer than usual, covering if the top hardens too quickly.

Serve

  1. Serve hot in the baking dish or carefully turn out onto a hot plate.

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 enrich and bind the custard, while whipped whites lighten and help it set.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk and egg mixture to form the soft, custardy body of the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the eggs and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the yolks become light and smooth when beaten.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to give some lift and a lighter crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Baking time and top covering. Eggs set as they heat, so the pudding needs a longer bake to firm through. The top can dry and harden before the centre sets, so covering it helps keep it 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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