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Dessert

Butter Pudding

A baked bread pudding made with buttered bread, milk, eggs, sugar, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease a deep pie dish.

  3. Layer thin slices of buttered bread in the dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix cold milk, powdered sugar, beaten eggs, and currants.

  2. Pour the mixture over the bread.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until set and golden.

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. 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. Milk + curranttop 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

Bread
Forms the layered base that soaks up the custard and gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the milk and sugar into a firm, sliceable custard.
Milk
Provides the liquid that forms the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown in the oven.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the cold milk and eggs.
Currants
Add sweet, chewy bursts of fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs set as they heat, turning the liquid custard firm. Underbaking leaves the centre runny, while overbaking can make the eggs curdle and turn rubbery.

Swap the currant

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

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

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