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Dessert

Bread-and-butter Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

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).

Assemble the pudding

  1. Grease a pudding dish and fill it two-thirds full with very thin slices of bread and butter.

  2. Sprinkle a cup of currants or dried cherries between the slices.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar, then add the milk and mix well.

  4. Pour the custard over the bread slices.

  5. Cover the dish with a plate and place it on the back of the stove for 1 hour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 45 minutes.

  2. Serve very hot, as it will fall when cool.

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. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread
Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and sets into the pudding body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the bread brown and giving a softer texture.
Eggs
Set the custard as it bakes, binding the milk and bread together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, keeping the pudding moist.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the top brown during baking.
Currants or dried cherries
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Serve very hot, as it will fall when cool.. The set custard is held up by heat and trapped steam; as it cools the structure relaxes and the pudding sinks, so serving it promptly keeps its shape and texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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