Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
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 the custard
Soak the bread crumbs in the milk.
Beat the egg yolk and mix in the sugar.
Stir the egg mixture into the soaked bread and milk.
Add the raisins and pour the mixture into a baking dish.
Top and bake
For the meringue, beat the egg white until stiff and gradually add 1½ tablespoons of sugar.
Spread the meringue over the pudding and brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven.
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.
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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,155 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
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Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,111 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread crumbs
- Soak up the milk to form the body of the pudding.
- Milk
- Moistens the bread and forms the custard base with the egg.
- Egg
- Sets the custard as it cooks and adds richness; the white whipped into the meringue gives a light topping.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard and helps the whipped egg white hold its shape in the meringue.
The step that matters
Spreading the meringue over the pudding. Whipped egg white must be beaten until stiff before sugar is gradually added, so it holds its shape and browns evenly rather than weeping or collapsing in the oven.
Swap the raisin
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, egg, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Datesfits about as well
- Raisinthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, egg, sugar. 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.
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