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Dessert

Bread and Butter Plum Pudding

A custard-soaked loaf of buttered bread with raisins, currants, citron, lemon rind, molasses, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Bread and Butter Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into slices ½ inch thick and butter them generously.

  2. Butter a deep baking dish.

Assemble

  1. Layer the buttered bread slices in the dish, fitting them neatly.

  2. Sprinkle some raisins, currants, citron, and lemon rind over the bread layer.

  3. Continue layering until the dish is nearly full, leaving space for the custard.

  4. Alternatively, pour custard over each layer as you assemble the pudding.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Beat the eggs and add the spices.

  3. Mix the sugar, salt, and molasses into the hot milk.

  4. Gradually combine the hot milk mixture with the beaten eggs.

Soak and bake

  1. Pour the custard over the pudding until the dish is full, letting it soak in.

  2. Add any remaining custard as needed to ensure it soaks in.

  3. Cover with a smaller plate and press down, letting it sit for several hours.

  4. Cover with a dish or pan to prevent burning and bake.

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

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

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread (in the method)
Forms the layered structure that soaks up the custard and holds its shape.
Eggs
Set the custard as it heats, giving the pudding its body and firmness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and softness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown during baking.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep, sweet flavor to the custard.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture scattered between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Soaking the pudding before baking. Letting the custard soak through the bread for several hours lets the bread absorb liquid evenly. Skipping or rushing this leaves dry pockets and uneven setting in the baked pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, molasses, raisin, currant. 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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