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
Prepare the custard
Beat the eggs until light.
Add the milk and sugar, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
Assemble and bake
Cut the bread or rusks in halves or slices and butter them well.
Place the buttered bread on top of the pudding mixture.
Bake until the center is set.
Serve
Serve 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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Set the custard and bind the milk into a sliceable pudding as they cook.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that soaks into the bread and sets with the eggs.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and helps it taste rich and balanced.
- Bread or rusks
- Absorbs the egg-milk custard and gives the pudding its body.
- Butter
- Adds richness and helps the buttered bread brown lightly on top.
The step that matters
Bake until the center is set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves a loose, runny center, while overbaking can make the custard grainy or weepy. Check that the center wobbles only slightly when the dish is gently moved.
“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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