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Dessert

A Bread and Butter Pudding

A layered pudding of buttered bread, currants, brown sugar, eggs, milk, and rose water, baked and topped with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

A Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut slices of bread, butter them moderately thick, omit the crust; use stale bread.

  2. Butter a deep dish and lay the buttered bread slices on the bottom.

  3. Prepare a pound of currants, picking, washing, and drying them.

Assemble

  1. Spread one third of the currants thickly over the bread and butter, and sprinkle brown sugar.

  2. Add another layer of buttered bread, then cover it with currants and sugar.

  3. Add a third layer of bread, currants, and sugar, then pour over the whole mixture of four beaten eggs, a pint of milk, and a wine glass of rose water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the pudding for an hour, then grate nutmeg over it when finished.

  2. Serve warm, not hot.

  3. Substitute raisins, seeded and cut in half, for the currants.

  4. Optionally use stewed gooseberries or minced pippin apples instead of currants.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

744Calories
28 gProtein
15 gFat
124 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Currant + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 during baking, binding the milk and bread into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and sets when baked with the eggs.
Bread
Forms the layers that soak up the custard and give the pudding its body.
Butter (in the method)
Adds richness and fat, and helps the bread layers brown lightly in the oven.
Currants
Provide chewy, concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the layers.
Brown sugar (in the method)
Adds sweetness and a caramel note to the currant layers.

The step that matters

Use stale bread and pour the egg mixture over all the layers. Stale bread holds its shape and absorbs the egg and milk mixture without turning mushy, so the layers keep their structure while the custard sets during baking.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, egg. 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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