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Dessert

Bread-and-butter Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding made with buttered bread, currants, nutmeg, sugar, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread-and-butter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter and cut the bread into thin slices.

  2. Grease a 1‑pint pie dish with clarified dripping.

  3. Wash the currants, dry them, and pick them over.

Assemble and soak

  1. Layer the bread slices in the dish, sprinkling currants between each slice.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then add the sugar and milk, stirring well.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. Serve in the dish or turn out onto a hot plate and sprinkle with sugar.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + milktop 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

Eggs
Set the custard so the bread holds together when baked.
Milk
Forms the custard that soaks into the bread and keeps it moist.
Bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and sets into the pudding.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chew between the bread layers.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread before baking. If the bread is not given enough time to soak up the custard, dry patches remain and the pudding bakes unevenly. Letting the bread absorb the liquid fully before baking gives an even, moist texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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