Name: Milk Pudding
Ingredients: 2 pints milk; 1 ounce sugar; 1½ ounces butter; 1 egg; ½ ounce tea or 1 ounce cocoa; 12 ounces bread; 6 ounces potatoes

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Milk Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Heat the milk in a saucepan until warm.
Add sugar and butter, stirring until dissolved.
Beat the egg and mix it into the milk mixture.
Prepare the tea or cocoa and add it to the mixture.

Serve

Serve with bread and boiled potatoes on the side.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Tea + potatotop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together136 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk: Forms the liquid base of the pudding and gives it body.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Cocoa or tea: Adds flavour and aroma to the milk.

Swap the potato

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

Potatothe original
Capsicumfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Sweet potatofits less well

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