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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding made with egg, milk, sugar, currants, and butter.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, whisk the egg and sugar into the milk until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Strain the custard mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the bread and butter into small squares and layer them in a buttered pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle currants and chopped peel between the layers.

  3. Pour the custard over the bread and let it soak for 30 minutes.

  4. Bake until the pudding has risen and is set, about 30 to 40 minutes.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Sets the custard as it cooks, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that soaks into the bread and bakes set.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and forms the layered structure that holds the pudding together.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly on the surface during baking.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Pour the custard over the bread and let it soak for 30 minutes. Soaking lets the bread absorb the custard so it bakes evenly rather than leaving dry patches or a watery layer beneath. Egg proteins then set during baking, so the pudding firms without curdling when the oven is hot enough.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, sugar, butter, 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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