Name: Baked Cranberry Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint bread crumbs; 1 tablespoon butter; 2 eggs; 1 pint stewed fruit (or fresh fruit like peaches); Sugar to taste

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 ↓

Baked Cranberry Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Pour boiling water over the bread crumbs.
Melt the butter and stir it into the bread crumbs.
Once the bread is softened, add the eggs and beat thoroughly.
Mix in the stewed fruit and sweeten to your taste.
If using fresh fruit, layer slices of peaches for added flavor.
Serve with a sweet sugar 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.

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).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together860 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Bread + peachtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together55 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).