Name: Bread and Butter Pudding
Ingredients: Thinly sliced bread; Butter; Currants; 1 teaspoon salt; Custard mixture (prepared separately)

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Butter each slice of bread evenly.
Butter a baking dish and layer the bread slices in it, scattering washed and dried currants between the layers.
Prepare a custard mixture, adding 1 teaspoon of salt, and pour it over the bread layers, filling the dish.
Cover the dish with a plate to keep the bread submerged and let it soak for at least 1 hour.
Add any remaining custard as the bread absorbs the first.
Bake for 1 hour or until set.
Serve with a foaming sauce.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,856 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,398 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).