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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with sliced bread, butter, currants, custard of milk, eggs, sugar, molasses, and lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Bread and Butter Pudding

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Bread and Butter 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. Cut the bread into very thin slices to almost fill a baking dish.

  2. Butter each slice evenly and butter the dish well.

Assemble and soak

  1. Layer the bread slices in the dish, scattering currants between the layers.

  2. Prepare a custard by mixing milk, beaten eggs, sugar, molasses, and salt.

  3. Pour the custard over the bread slices, filling the dish.

  4. Let it soak for at least an hour, pressing down with a plate.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as it bakes, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that soaks into the bread and bakes to a soft texture.
Bread
Absorbs the custard during soaking and sets into the soft, layered body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly on the surface as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and contributes to browning on the baked surface.
Molasses
Adds depth, dark colour and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness to the custard.

The step that matters

Let it soak for at least an hour, pressing down with a plate.. Bread needs time to absorb the custard fully; pressing keeps slices submerged so the pudding bakes evenly without dry patches or floating bread.

Swap the currant

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

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

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