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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A custard‑filled bread pudding made with buttered bread, currants, eggs, milk, sugar, and cinnamon.

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 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 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 and layer

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

  2. Layer bread and butter in the dish, followed by a layer of currants.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is three-quarters full.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs with a little ground cinnamon and sugar.

  2. Add the milk to the egg mixture and pour it over the bread.

  3. Let it soak for a while.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) or steam 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. 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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Bread and butter
Forms the structure, and its butter adds richness as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, holding the pudding together.
Milk
Makes the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and gives a soft texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pockets throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Let it soak for a while. The bread must absorb the custard before baking. Otherwise dry patches stay in the pudding, and the eggs set unevenly, leaving soggy spots beside dry ones.

Swap the currant

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

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

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