Name: Brown Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 1½ pints brown bread crumbs, stale, coarsely grated; water, enough to soak crumbs; 1 cup raisins, stoned; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1½ teaspoons ground cloves; ½ nutmeg, grated; 1 egg, beaten; ½ pint milk; table syrup or brown sugar, to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brown Bread 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

Soak the brown bread crumbs in water until nearly covered.
Add the raisins, cinnamon, ground cloves, nutmeg, beaten egg, and milk.
Sweeten to taste with table syrup or brown sugar.
Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Bake and serve

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1½ hours.
Serve hot or cold, with or without 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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown bread crumbs: Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the soaking liquid to create its soft, moist body.
Egg: Binds the mixture and sets during baking to give the pudding its custard-like structure.
Milk: Adds moisture and, with the egg, helps form a tender, custardy texture as it bakes.
Raisins: Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Table syrup or brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the pudding.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, egg, milk, syrup):

Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Raisinthe original
Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, egg, milk, syrup. 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.