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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A pudding made by layering buttered bread, currants, citrus peel, and a beaten egg‑milk mixture, then baking.

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 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 slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Spread butter on slices of bread.

  2. Layer the bread in a dish, adding currants and a little chopped lemon or orange peel between each slice.

Soak and bake

  1. Beat 2 to 3 eggs into the milk and pour it gently over the bread.

  2. Let it stand for 1 hour.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the structure and soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the milk custard into a soft, sliceable texture as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard, keeping the pudding moist.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown on its surface.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets between the bread layers.
Chopped lemon or orange peel
Adds a bright citrus aroma that lifts the rich custard.

The step that matters

Letting the bread stand before baking. Standing for an hour gives the bread time to soak up the egg and milk mixture. Bread that is not fully soaked can stay dry in patches, while the custard sets unevenly during baking.

Swap the currant

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

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

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