Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread-and-butter-pudding, in Pie-dish

A baked pudding made from layered buttered bread, raisins, and a sweetened egg‑milk custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, in Pie-dish

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with salt, zest, and powdered sugar.

  2. Dilute the mixture with cold milk and strain it through a sieve.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter one side of the bread slices and layer them in a pie dish, sprinkling raisins or currants between layers.

  2. Pour the egg mixture over the bread layers.

  3. Place the dish in a flat stewpan with a little water at the bottom.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 25-30 minutes.

  5. Sprinkle with lemon-flavored powdered sugar before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

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 milk and bread together.
Milk
Soaks into the bread and forms the liquid that the eggs set into custard.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and forms the layered, soft structure of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown on the exposed surface.
Raisins or currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Placing the dish in water. A little water in the stewpan makes a gentle water bath, so the custard heats slowly and evenly. Without it, the eggs can overcook, turning grainy or curdled before the centre sets.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes