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Dessert

Bread-and-butter Pudding

A custard-soaked bread pudding with butter, currants, sugar, and nutmeg, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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. Butter and cut the bread into thin slices.

  2. Grease a pint pie dish with clarified dripping.

  3. Wash the currants, dry them, and pick them over.

Assemble

  1. Layer the bread and butter in the dish, sprinkling currants between each slice.

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

  3. Pour the custard over the bread and butter, then grate nutmeg on top.

  4. Let the pudding soak for 30 minutes before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 30 minutes.

  2. Serve in the dish or turn out onto a hot plate and sprinkle with sugar.

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 the pudding firms up as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid custard that soaks into the bread and keeps the pudding moist.
Bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the bread and helps it brown.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a caramel-like flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Let the pudding soak before baking. Resting lets the bread absorb the custard evenly; baking too soon can leave dry bread patches and a loose, uneven set.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More bread pudding recipes

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