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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A custard-soaked bread loaf baked with currants, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices.

  2. Wash and pick the currants.

  3. Butter each slice of bread.

Assemble and soak

  1. Layer the bread in a 1-quart mold, sprinkling currants between layers.

  2. Beat the eggs and sugar together until light.

  3. Gradually add the milk and grated nutmeg to the egg mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture over the layered bread and currants.

  5. Let it stand for 15 minutes.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Serve cold with cream sauce.

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

Bread
Forms the structure and soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding firms up when baked.
Milk
Makes the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the egg mixture beat up light.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly on top.

The step that matters

Let the bread soak before baking. Letting the custard stand allows the bread to absorb the liquid evenly. Dry patches stay bready and the pudding can turn out uneven when baked.

Swap the currant

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

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

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