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Dessert

Bread-and-butter Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding with currants, candied peel, and ratafia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. 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. Pick and wash the currants, then scatter a few on the bottom of a baking dish.

  2. Cut thin slices of bread and butter, removing some crusts, and layer them in the dish.

  3. Pour some custard mixture over the bread and sprinkle with currants.

  4. Repeat with two more layers of bread, custard, and currants, adding chopped candied peel if desired.

Make the custard

  1. Make the custard by beating the eggs with milk, powdered sugar, and ratafia.

Soak and bake

  1. Pour the custard over the layered bread and let it soak for 2 hours before baking.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 45 minutes.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 creamy body.
Bread
Forms the layers that soak up custard and hold the pudding together as it bakes.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture into a custard that moistens the bread and softens it.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the milk and egg mixture.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Soaking the bread before baking. Letting the bread soak gives the custard time to penetrate the layers. Without soaking, dry patches stay unset and the pudding bakes unevenly with a dry texture.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, bread, egg, milk, sugar, brandy):

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

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