Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding made with buttered bread, currants, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Bread and Butter Pudding

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread and Butter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices and butter one side of each slice.

  2. Layer the bread in a pudding pan, buttered side up, and sprinkle currants between the layers.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar.

  2. Add enough milk to the egg mixture to fill the dish.

  3. Pour the mixture over the layered bread and let it soak for a while.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) or boil as directed for bread puddings.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 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

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the pudding into a soft, sliceable texture as they cook.
Bread
Forms the layered structure and soaks up the custard so the pudding holds together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, keeping the pudding moist as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown lightly on its buttered surface.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the bread soak before baking. Soaking lets the bread absorb the egg and milk custard evenly. Without enough soaking, dry patches stay firm and the pudding bakes unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Soft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes