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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made from buttered bread, sugar, currants, milk, eggs, and nutmeg or lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Bread and Butter Pudding

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Layer the pudding

  1. Layer thickly-buttered slices of bread in the bottom of a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle a few currants or raisins over the bread.

  3. Add more slices of bread and butter, then sprinkle more currants or raisins.

  4. Repeat layering until the dish is filled.

Make the custard and bake

  1. Boil 6 cups of milk and pour it hot over 3 well-beaten eggs.

  2. Mix well and pour the mixture over the layered bread.

  3. 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.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + milktop 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 when baked, binding the milk into a soft, sliceable texture.
Milk
Forms the custard base that soaks into the bread and gives the pudding its moisture.
Bread
Forms the structure of the pudding, soaking up the custard as it bakes.
Currants or sultana raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as the pudding bakes.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot milk over the eggs. Pouring boiling milk onto eggs quickly, while whisking, keeps them from scrambling in lumps. Beating the eggs well first helps the custard stay smooth and set evenly in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

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

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