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Dessert

Bread and Butter Pudding

A baked pudding made with sliced bread, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, and marmalade or currants.

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: 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

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. Cut the bread into moderately thin slices and butter each slice.

Assemble

  1. Layer the bread in a large pudding dish, adding a few currants or marmalade between the layers.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together, then add the milk.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the layered bread and butter.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 40 minutes, or 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + spreadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 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 structure and a soft, sliceable texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, moistening the bread as it soaks in.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the savory richness of the butter and eggs.
Bread
Soaks up the custard, forming the body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top of the bread brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the custard firms up only when cooked enough. Pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny in the middle, while over-baking can make it dry and grainy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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