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Dessert

Butter Pudding

A simple bread pudding made with sliced bread, milk, sugar, eggs, and optional currants, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

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 the thin slices of bread in a deep pie dish.

Make and pour the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the cold milk, powdered sugar, and beaten eggs until well combined.

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

  3. Sprinkle currants on top if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. 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.

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. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 base layer that soaks up the custard and gives the pudding its body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that soaks into the bread and sets with the eggs for moisture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the cold milk and eggs.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweet, chewy fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the custard runny while overbaking can make it tough and curdled. Pull it from the oven once the centre is just set and the top is golden.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, sugar, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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