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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with sliced bread, butter, currants, eggs, milk, sugar, nutmeg, and topped with puff pastry.

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: 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

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 loaf into thin slices and butter each slice.

  2. Butter a baking dish and layer the bread slices in it, sprinkling currants between layers until the dish is full.

Make and bake

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

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the layered bread and currants.

  3. Cover the dish with puff pastry and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 together when baked.
Milk
Forms the custard base that soaks into the bread and keeps it moist.
Bread
Forms the soft, absorbent body that soaks up the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture over the layered bread and currants. The bread needs time to absorb the custard before baking; if the bread is left dry or the custard is not spread evenly, parts of the pudding may stay dry or set unevenly. Eggs set as they heat, so the custard must be evenly distributed for a uniform texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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