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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with buttered bread, currants, raisins, custard, lemon juice, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter one side of the bread slices.

  2. Grease a pie dish with butter and sprinkle currants and raisins at the bottom.

Assemble

  1. Layer the bread and butter, alternating with currants and sultanas until the dish is nearly full.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour custard over the layers, squeeze in lemon juice, and sprinkle with caster sugar.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the structure of the pudding, soaking up custard as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the bread tender and helps it brown lightly.
Custard
Eggs and milk set in the oven, binding the layers into a soft, sliceable pudding.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit between the bread layers.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the top and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Custard sets as its egg proteins coagulate with heat. Taking the pudding out too early leaves a runny centre, while overbaking can make it curdled or dry.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, currant, raisin, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, currant, raisin, sugar. 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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