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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale bread, butter, raisins, eggs, milk, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

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: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter thin slices of stale bread and remove the crusts.

Assemble

  1. Layer the bread in a pudding dish, alternating with layers of stoned raisins.

  2. In a bowl, mix the beaten eggs, brown sugar, salt, and milk.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the layered bread and raisins.

  4. Sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg over each layer of bread.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and sets into a soft, layered texture.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its body and richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps the pudding moist as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like depth of flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown on its surface in the oven.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture over the layered bread and raisins. The bread needs time to absorb the custard before baking. Eggs set when heated, so a well-soaked, evenly distributed custard gives a smooth, cohesive pudding rather than dry patches or a curdled texture.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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