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.
Make the custard
Boil the milk with sugar in a saucepan.
Beat an egg and mix it into the milk, then heat until thickened.
Butter the slices of bread.
Soak the buttered bread slices in the custard for 1–2 hours.
Assemble and bake
Layer the soaked bread in a dish, sprinkling currants and pounded sugar between layers.
Top the layers with preserves.
Beat two eggs into another cup of milk and pour the mixture over the layered bread.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, tender structure.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture that soaks into the bread.
- Bread
- Absorbs the custard and forms the body of the pudding.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat to the bread, helping it brown at the edges.
The step that matters
Heat the custard until thickened. Eggs thicken when heated gently, but if the custard gets too hot it can curdle or scramble. Heat slowly and stir until it coats a spoon.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, bread, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Peachfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, bread, butter. 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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