Name: Bread Pudding, No. I
Ingredients: 1 loaf baker's bread; butter (for spreading); 1 quart boiling milk; 7 eggs; 1 pound sugar; 1 pound raisins; spices to taste (cinnamon, nutmeg, mace)

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 ↓

Bread Pudding, No. I

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the bread

Cut the loaf of bread into slices and spread each slice with butter.
Place the slices in a pan and pour the boiling milk over them.
Let the mixture stand overnight.

Mix and bake

In the morning, add the eggs, sugar, raisins, and spices.
Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until done, similar to pound cake.

Serve

Serve with a 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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Baker's bread: Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up the milk and custard to hold its structure.
Milk: Soaks into the bread and provides the liquid that sets into a custard with the eggs.
Eggs: Set during baking to bind the soaked bread into a firm, sliceable custard.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps browning on the baked surface.
Raisins: Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chew throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Letting the bread soak overnight. The bread needs time to absorb the hot milk fully; otherwise pockets stay dry and the custard bakes unevenly.

Swap the raisin

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Raisinthe original
Lemonfits about as well

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