Name: Yankee Pudding
Ingredients: 1 Egg; 1 cup Flour; ½ cup Sugar; ½ cup Bread Crumbs; 1 tablespoon Marmalade; ½ teaspoon Baking Soda; ½ cup Milk

Why it works: Bread and milk 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 ↓

Yankee 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and bread crumbs together, then stir in the marmalade.
Warm the milk slightly and dissolve the baking soda in it.
Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Bake

Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for about one hour.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg: Binds the batter and helps give the pudding its set structure as it bakes.
Flour: Forms the main structure of the batter as its proteins set in the oven.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the crust.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and add body and texture to the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidity in the batter to produce gas that helps it rise.
Milk: Hydrates the dry ingredients and adds moisture and richness to the pudding.

“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.