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Dessert

Bbead and Butter Pudding

A baked pudding made with currants, bread, butter, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, lemon peel, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bbead 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Wash and pick the currants, then sprinkle some at the bottom of a quart dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices and layer them in the dish, adding currants between the layers.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs (excluding one white) and mix in the sugar, nutmeg, and grated lemon peel.

  3. Stir in the milk and pour the mixture over the layered bread and currants.

  4. Bake for one 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.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 it holds its shape rather than running loose when baked.
Bread
Forms the structure of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb and flavor.
Milk
Thins the egg mixture so it soaks into the bread and bakes into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Pour the custard slowly over the layered bread. The bread needs time to absorb the egg and milk mixture so the pudding bakes evenly. Pouring it gradually lets the bread soak it up instead of leaving pools of liquid that can keep the custard from setting.

Swap the currant

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

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

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