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Dessert

Bread and Butter

A bread pudding made with sliced bread, currants, milk, eggs, orange flower or rose water, and sauce of currant wine, brown sugar, water, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk 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 ↓

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

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices and remove the crusts.

  2. Layer some bread in the bottom of a dish, then add a layer of currants or preserved fruit.

  3. Continue layering bread and fruit until the dish is nearly full.

Soak and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, beaten eggs, orange flower or rose water, and brown sugar.

  2. Pour the mixture over the layered bread and let it soak for 2-3 hours.

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

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine currant wine, brown sugar, water, and butter in a saucepan and heat until boiling.

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 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

Bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding together.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, tender texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks into the bread and forms the custard with the eggs.
Currants
Add tart, chewy bursts of fruit flavour and moisture throughout the pudding.
Currant wine
Adds fruity acidity and depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread. The bread needs enough time to absorb the custard evenly. If it stays dry in places, those pockets will not set properly and the pudding can turn out patchy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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