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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A layered bread and butter pudding soaked in a custard of eggs, milk, and optional flour, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 layers

  1. Butter a deep dish and layer with slices of bread and butter.

  2. Sprinkle currants, sugar, spice, and candied peel between layers.

  3. Repeat layering for three or four rounds.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, whisk together flour (if using), eggs, and milk (or cream).

  2. Pour the batter over the layered bread and let it soak for 1-2 hours.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and bake for 1 hour.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, giving the pudding its structure as they cook.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and keeps the pudding moist.
Bread
Soaks up the custard and forms the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread brown at the edges.
Flour
Thickens the custard, giving a richer, firmer texture.

The step that matters

Letting the bread soak. The bread needs time to absorb the custard so it cooks evenly. Soaking for the full 1-2 hours helps prevent dry patches and a layer of unset egg at the bottom.

Swap the currant

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

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

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