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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with stale bread, eggs, milk, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bread and Butter Pudding

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Bread and Butter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the custard

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Stir the eggs into the milk and sweeten and flavor to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter the slices of stale bread.

  2. Layer the bread in a deep dish and pour some of the milk and egg mixture over it.

  3. Repeat layering with more bread and the milk and egg mixture until the dish is full.

  4. Let it stand for 5 minutes to absorb moisture.

  5. Fill up with any remaining milk and egg mixture.

  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until set.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 structure and body.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard base that soaks into the bread and gives a soft, creamy texture.
Stale bread
Absorbs the custard and holds its shape, becoming tender while the top crisps.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread slices brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Let it stand for 5 minutes to absorb moisture. Resting lets the bread soak up the custard before baking. This helps the pudding cook evenly and keeps the bread from floating or staying dry in patches.

“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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