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.
Prepare the dish
Butter the inside of an open pie dish.
Layer the bottom with slices of buttered bread.
Sprinkle a few washed currants and halved raisins over the bread.
Add another layer of bread and repeat the currant and raisin sprinkling until the dish is half full.
Do not sprinkle currants on the top layer.
Make the custard
Beat 3 to 4 eggs and mix with an equal amount of milk.
Sweeten the mixture liberally and add rose or vanilla extract.
Pour the egg mixture over the layered bread and let it soak.
Bake
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,180 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together494 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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, binding the pudding into a soft, sliceable body.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and keeps the pudding moist.
- Bread
- Provides the structure that absorbs the custard and holds the pudding together.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to the custard and helps the top brown as it bakes.
- Raisins
- Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture among the bread layers.
- Currants
- Add small bursts of tart fruitiness and chewy texture among the bread layers.
The step that matters
Let the bread soak before baking. Soaking lets the bread absorb the egg and milk mixture fully. Dry patches stay firm and unset, while evenly soaked bread bakes into a uniform, custardy pudding.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, raisin, egg, milk, sugar, rose):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Raspberryfits about as well
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, raisin, egg, milk, sugar, rose. 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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