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Dessert

Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made from buttered bread, milk, sugar, eggs, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Layer thin slices of buttered bread in a deep pie dish.

Make the custard

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

  2. Pour the mixture over the bread in the dish.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Sprinkle additional sugar on top if desired.

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

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, binding the milk and bread into a sliceable pudding.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and forms the liquid custard that bakes into a moist texture.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and provides the structure that holds the pudding together.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chew throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs set through gentle heat; underbaking leaves a wet, loose custard, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery. Watch for a firm center and golden top.

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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