Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A custard‑filled bread pudding made with bread, butter, currants, sugar, eggs, milk, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a pudding dish well and sprinkle with currants.

  2. Layer the bread and butter, currants, sugar, and nutmeg alternately in the dish.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them with the milk.

  2. Pour the custard over the layered bread and allow it to stand for a few minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

  2. Turn out and serve hot or cold.

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. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread and butter
Forms the layered structure and soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the milk mixture into a custard that holds the pudding together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, keeping the pudding moist.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the layers.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and layers and helps the top brown lightly.

The step that matters

Letting the custard stand before baking. Standing gives the bread time to absorb the egg and milk mixture, so the pudding bakes evenly instead of leaving dry bread or pooled liquid.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

Soft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes