Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked pudding made from soaked bread, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, nutmeg, currants, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

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.

Soak the bread

  1. Soak the bread and butter in a mixture of beaten eggs, milk, sugar, and nutmeg for 1-2 hours.

  2. Squeeze the soaked bread to remove excess moisture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add currants, salt, and sugar to the mixture.

  2. Grease a baking dish and pour in the pudding mixture.

  3. Dot the top with small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  5. Serve warm or cold.

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. Bread + nutmegtop 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

Bread
Forms the structure, soaking up the custard so the pudding holds together when baked.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard base and keeps the pudding moist as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness, and the pieces on top melt and help the surface brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly on the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat; underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking can make it curdle and turn grainy and dry.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Soft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes