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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked pudding made with buttered bread, fruit, eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Bread and Butter Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Butter the sides and bottom of a deep pudding dish.

  2. Butter the thin slices of bread and sprinkle them thickly with sugar and cinnamon.

  3. Layer the bread and chopped apple or preferred fruit in the dish until full.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs, then add the flour, milk, and a little salt; stir to combine.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bread and let it stand for 1 hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Remove the cover and let it brown.

  3. Serve with lemon sauce.

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. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + breadtop 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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding holds its shape when baked.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and keeps the pudding moist.
Bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and bakes into a soft, layered base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as the pudding bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown on the surface.
Flour
Thickens the custard slightly so it is less runny when baked.

The step that matters

Let the bread soak before baking. The bread needs time to absorb the egg and milk mixture. Dry patches stay firm and bland, so the custard should cover the bread fully before it goes into the oven.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, sugar, cinnamon, egg, flour, milk. 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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