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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with eggs, milk, sugar, buttered bread, raisins, and nutmeg.

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: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Bread and Butter Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Assemble

  1. Beat the eggs in a pie dish.

  2. Add enough milk to fill the dish and 2 teaspoons of sugar.

  3. Layer 4 slices of overlapping bread and butter on top.

  4. Sprinkle with sugar and add 2 teaspoons of cleaned raisins.

  5. Grate nutmeg over the top.

Bake

  1. Bake in the oven until set and lightly browned.

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. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving the pudding its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and keeps it moist.
Bread
Soaks up the custard and forms the soft, layered body of the pudding.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until just set. Egg proteins set with gentle heat; overbaking makes the custard grainy and watery, while underbaking leaves it runny in the middle.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Lemonfits about as well

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

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