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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with sliced bread, butter, currants, eggs, milk, sugar, and nutmeg or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble

  1. Butter the bread slices and layer them in a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle currants between the layers.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix with milk, sugar, and flavoring.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the bread and butter layers.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

  2. Serve in the baking dish.

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the layered structure that soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its body.
Milk
Makes up the liquid that carries the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly on its surface.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture over the bread and butter layers. The custard needs to soak fully into the bread before baking so the pudding cooks evenly and does not turn dry or patchy. Letting the bread absorb the liquid first helps it set into a soft, uniform texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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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