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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A layered pudding made with bread, butter, currants, eggs, milk, sugar, and cinnamon, baked or steamed.

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

  1. Butter a pudding dish.

Assemble

  1. Layer bread and butter in the dish, followed by a layer of currants. Repeat until the dish is three-quarters full.

  2. Beat the eggs with a little ground cinnamon and sugar.

  3. Add the milk to the egg mixture and pour it over the bread layers.

  4. Allow the mixture to soak for a while.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven or steam as directed for bread puddings.

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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Eggs
Set the custard so the pudding firms up as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and moistens the pudding.
Bread and butter
Provides the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding together.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and aids gentle browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to soak for a while. The bread needs time to absorb the egg and milk custard. If it bakes before soaking, dry pockets remain and the custard may not set evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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