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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with sliced bread, custard, nutmeg, and optional nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Bread and Butter Pudding

Why it works: Nutmeg and nuts work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 239 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. 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.

Assemble

  1. Butter the slices of light bread.

  2. Place the bread in a pan.

  3. Pour the custard over the bread.

  4. Grate a little nutmeg on top.

Bake

  1. Bake until light brown in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Keep the oven at moderate temperature, not too hot.

  3. If desired, add 1 cup of nuts.

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. Nutmeg + nutstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Bread + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Light bread
Soaks up the custard and gives the pudding its layered structure as it sets.
Custard
Its eggs and milk set as the pudding bakes, giving it a creamy, custard-like body.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that complements the custard.

The step that matters

Keep the oven moderate, not too hot. High heat makes the egg proteins in the custard tighten too quickly, which can leave it curdled or grainy. It also browns the top before the centre has set. Moderate heat lets the custard set gently and evenly.

Swap the nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nutmeg):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nutmeg. 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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