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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked pudding made with stale bread, butter, milk, egg, sugar, lemon rind, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Cut the bread into slices and layer them in a pie dish.

  2. Place small pats of butter between each layer and sprinkle lemon rind on top.

  3. Spread the currants beneath the top layer.

Soak and bake

  1. Beat together the egg, milk, and sugar, then pour it over the bread.

  2. Allow to stand for 20 minutes to soak.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Milk + lemontop 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

Stale bread
Dry bread soaks up the custard and holds its shape while baking.
Egg
Sets the milk mixture into a custard that binds the pudding together.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and bakes it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top layer brown as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and aids browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Allow to stand for 20 minutes to soak. Giving the bread time to absorb the custard before baking lets it soften evenly. Skipping this leaves dry pockets and a pudding that is uneven in texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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