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Dessert

Bread-and-butter Pudding

A baked pudding made from thin bread slices, butter, currants, lemon peel, milk, eggs, sugar, spices, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 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

  1. Butter a baking dish.

  2. Layer 3 slices of bread, sprinkling each layer with currants and lemon peel.

Make the custard

  1. Boil 3/4 pint of milk with bay leaves and mace for 10 minutes, then remove the bay leaves and mace.

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of 3 eggs with 3/4 pint of cold milk, then add the hot milk and sugar.

  3. Pour the mixture gently into the dish to avoid disturbing the currants and lemon peel.

Bake and serve

  1. Grate nutmeg over the top.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 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.

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. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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
Set the custard as they cook, holding the soft pudding together.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard base that softens the bread and sets when baked.
Bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds its shape.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown on top.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pockets distributed through the pudding.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture gently into the dish. Pouring slowly keeps the currants and lemon peel in their layers instead of floating loose. Gentle pouring also lets the bread soak evenly, so the custard sets with an even texture rather than pockets of unsoaked bread.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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