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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with sliced bread, butter, fruit, and a custard of eggs, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Bread and Butter Pudding

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 ↓

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 the layers

  1. Butter the bread slices and layer them in a well-buttered dish.

  2. Sprinkle citron, raisins, or sweetmeats over the bread.

  3. Repeat layering with more bread and fruit until the dish is full.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the milk, salt, nutmeg, and rose water.

  2. Sweeten the mixture to taste and pour it over the layered bread.

  3. Let it soak for 1 to 2 hours before baking.

Bake

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

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. 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

Bread
Forms the structure, soaking up the custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the custard, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that the eggs set into a custard.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly at the edges.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Letting the bread soak. The bread needs time to absorb the custard before baking. Dry spots stay floury or unevenly set, while a well-soaked layer bakes into a uniformly tender pudding.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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