Skip to main content
Dessert

Common Bread and Butter Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Common 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).

Assemble

  1. Sweeten the milk with the sugar and stir in the beaten eggs and grated nutmeg.

  2. In a dish that holds nearly 3 pints, layer slices of buttered bread with currants in between.

  3. Pour the milk mixture over the bread layers until nearly full.

Bake

  1. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, 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.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard, binding the milk into a sliceable, tender pudding as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the custard base that soaks into the bread and keeps the pudding moist.
Bread
Provides the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the layers together.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chew between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Pour the milk mixture over the bread layers until nearly full.. Bread needs time to absorb the custard before and during baking. Filling the dish nearly to the top leaves room for the custard to rise and settle without spilling, and the bread soaks up the liquid as it bakes.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes