Name: Fruit Pudding
Ingredients: ½ loaf of baker's bread, crumbled; 4 eggs, beaten separately; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 pint of berries; Sugar (to taste); Butter (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 ↓

Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Combine the crumbled bread, beaten eggs, salt, and berries in a mixing bowl.
Steam the mixture for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

For the sauce, mix sugar and butter to taste, and flavor as desired.

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).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Baker's bread: Soaks up liquid and gives the pudding its body and soft crumb.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving the pudding structure.
Berries: Add moisture, sweetness, and fruity flavor throughout the pudding.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the sauce.

“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.