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Dessert

Bread and Butter

A baked bread pudding made with butter, milk, eggs, and currant wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

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 the layers

  1. Cut thin slices of bread and butter them.

  2. Layer some bread in the bottom of a dish, followed by a layer of well-cleaned currants or preserved fruit. Repeat the layers until the dish is nearly filled.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 quart of milk with 4 well-beaten eggs and 3 tablespoons of orange-flower or rose water.

  2. Sweeten the mixture with brown sugar to taste and pour it over the layered bread and butter.

  3. Let it soak for 2 to 3 hours before baking.

Bake and serve

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

  2. For the sauce, combine 1 teacup of currant wine, 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, 3 tablespoons of water, and a walnut-sized piece of butter in a saucepan. Stir until boiling hot and serve with the pudding.

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. 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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  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
Bind the milk and bread into a custard that sets when baked.
Bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds its shape.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks the bread and forms the custard base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the bread tender and helps it brown.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel note to the custard.

The step that matters

Soaking before baking. The bread needs time to absorb the custard fully; if it bakes before soaking is complete, dry patches remain and the pudding sets unevenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Orangethe original

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