Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with bread, butter, milk, eggs, sugar, currants, and vanilla or nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Bread and Butter Pudding

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. 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).

  2. Butter a pie dish.

Assemble

  1. Layer the slices of bread and butter in the dish, adding currants between the layers.

Make the custard

  1. Sweeten the milk with sugar, then add vanilla essence or grated nutmeg.

  2. Beat the eggs and stir them into the milk mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture over the bread layers.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 30 minutes.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Set the milk mixture into a soft custard that holds the bread together.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and forms the soft, layered body of the pudding.
Milk
Carries the custard, keeping the pudding moist as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown slightly on top.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture over the bread layers. The bread needs time to soak up the custard before baking. Pouring too quickly or skipping the soak leaves dry patches, while the eggs set the custard as it bakes.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes