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Dessert

Butter Pudding

A sweet pudding made with raisins, buttered bread, eggs, milk, sugar, and nutmeg, boiled and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Butter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

  1. Butter a pudding basin and line the inside with stoned raisins.

  2. Nearly fill the basin with slices of bread and butter, crusts removed.

Make the custard

  1. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add milk, sugar, and grated nutmeg; mix well.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bread and butter and let it stand for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Tie a floured cloth over the basin and boil for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with sweet 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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 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
Set the custard and bind the milk into a soft, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that soaks the bread and cooks into the custard.
Bread and butter
Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the custard as it stands.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture against the soft custard.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the bread and butter and let it stand for 30 minutes. Standing lets the bread absorb the egg and milk mixture before cooking, so the pudding holds together and cooks evenly rather than leaving dry pockets or pools of liquid.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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