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Dessert

Bread- And- Butter^ or Newmarket Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding made with milk, lemon rind, cinnamon, bay leaf, sugar, eggs, currants, raisins, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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^ or Newmarket Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk with lemon rind, cinnamon, and bay leaf for a few minutes.

  2. Add fine sugar to taste and let the milk cool.

  3. Gradually mix the cooled milk with the egg yolks and beaten egg whites.

Assemble

  1. Butter the bread slices and line a pudding dish with them.

  2. Layer the bread with currants and raisins, then more bread, finishing with a layer of buttered bread.

  3. Pour the custard over the layered bread and let it soak for 1 hour.

  4. For presentation, place large raisins or small plums at the bottom of the mold.

Bake

  1. Bake or steam the pudding for about 30-40 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.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set into a creamy, tender texture.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the custard so it sets with a softer body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and moistens the bread as it soaks.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and sets into the body of the pudding as it bakes.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Let the custard cool before mixing in the eggs. Adding hot milk to egg yolks and whites can scramble them, leaving a grainy custard instead of a smooth, evenly set one.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, sugar, egg, 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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