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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with currants, buttered bread, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and milk.

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 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 ↓

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. Wash and pick the currants, then sprinkle some at the bottom of a quart dish.

  3. Cut the bread into thin slices and layer it in the dish, adding currants between each layer.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then mix in the sugar, nutmeg, and milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the egg mixture over the bread layers about 10 minutes before baking.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes 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.

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 + 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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard and bind the bread and milk into a sliceable pudding.
Bread
Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it rests.
Milk
Makes the custard liquid that cooks into a soft, moist texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweet, chewy fruit between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Pouring the egg mixture over the bread before baking. The bread needs time to absorb the custard so the pudding bakes evenly and does not stay dry or soggy in pockets. Letting it soak about 10 minutes before the oven helps the layers hold together when set.

Swap the currant

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

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

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