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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked dessert made with buttered bread, raisins, custard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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. Spread butter on the bread and cut it into ½-inch thick slices.

  2. Layer the bread in a buttered pudding dish, adding raisins between layers until the dish is full.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk to make a custard.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the custard over the bread and sprinkle sugar on top.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of butter to the custard so it floats on top.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  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 as they cook, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that soaks into the bread and moistens it.
Bread
Absorbs the custard and provides the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown and caramelise.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, but overbaking makes the custard curdle and turn grainy and watery. Bake only until the centre just wobbles and the surface is set.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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