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 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 bread
Boil the milk.
Pour the boiled milk over the broken bread in a basin.
Cover and let sit for 10‑15 minutes to allow the bread to swell.
Mash the bread to a fine pulp.
Stir in the butter or suet.
Make the mixture
Beat the eggs with cinnamon, grated lemon peel, and sugar.
Stir the egg mixture into the bread.
Add the candied peel and currants.
Steam
Place the mixture in a well‑buttered pudding basin.
Cover with buttered paper.
Place the basin in a saucepan with boiling water up to three‑quarters of the basin.
Cover and steam for 1 hour, adding more water if needed.
Bake and serve
Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.
Sift sugar over it and serve hot or cold.
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.
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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).
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Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,655 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Soaks up the milk and forms the soft, bulky body of the pudding.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and set as it cooks, giving the pudding its firmness.
- Milk
- Softens the bread and keeps the pudding moist as it cooks.
- Butter or suet
- Adds fat, giving a richer flavour and a more tender crumb.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the cinnamon and dried fruit.
- Currants
- Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit through the pudding.
The step that matters
Steaming with enough water. Steam cooks the pudding gently and keeps it moist. If the water in the saucepan runs low, the basin can dry out and the pudding turns tough, so top up the water as the recipe directs.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, cinnamon, milk, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Raisinfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, cinnamon, milk, 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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