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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding with butter, currants, citrus, eggs, milk, and ratafia, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Bread and Butter Pudding

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. 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. Slice the bread and spread it with butter.

  2. Layer the bread in a dish, adding currants, sliced citron, orange, or lemon between each layer.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix milk, 2–3 eggs, a few pimentos, and a little ratafia to create an unboiled custard.

  2. Pour the custard over the layered bread and let it soak for at least 2 hours before baking.

  3. Optionally, line the edge of the dish with pastry for a nicer appearance.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard to become tender.
Eggs
Set the custard when baked, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that carries the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the bread brown lightly and taste rich.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread before baking. Letting the bread soak for at least 2 hours lets the custard fully penetrate the layers. Without enough soaking, dry patches stay unmoistened and the pudding can bake unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, orange, lemon, milk, 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.

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145Chocolate 53Brown 51Fruit 44Lemon 37Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

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