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Dessert

Bread-and-butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with bread, raisins, eggs, milk, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. 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. Butter a baking dish.

  2. Layer a few stoned and chopped raisins in the dish.

  3. Place the slices of bread alternately with the raisins.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the milk, flavoring, grated nutmeg, and salt.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the bread layers.

Bake

  1. Top with 3 more slices of bread and bake 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.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure and a soft, sliceable texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that soaks into the bread and sets with the eggs.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and holds its shape, forming the body of the pudding.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.
Butter
Greases the dish and adds richness to the bread layers.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the pudding too early leaves a loose, watery custard, while overbaking can make it dry and curdled.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

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