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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding made with butter, milk, sultanas, sugar, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

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

  1. Grease a 1½ pint pie dish and sprinkle a few sultanas or currants at the bottom.

Assemble and soak

  1. Add a layer of bread and repeat until the dish is three‑quarters full, finishing with bread.

  2. Warm the milk and beat it well with the egg and sugar.

  3. Pour the custard over the pudding and let it stand for at least 30 minutes before cooking.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Allow it to cool for about 5 minutes before turning it onto a hot dish.

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 + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 as it bakes into a soft, set layered pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the bread brown lightly on top.
Milk
Provides the liquid that sets with the egg into a custard around the bread.
Egg
Binds the custard so it sets when baked rather than staying liquid.
Sultanas or currants
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and adds to the browning of the top.

The step that matters

Letting the custard soak in before baking. Standing time lets the bread absorb the milk and egg mixture, so the pudding bakes evenly and does not stay dry in pockets or runny underneath.

Swap the currant

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

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

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