Name: Aunt Marys Pudding
Ingredients: butter; finely minced candied peel; chopped suet; light bread; 1 egg; ½ pint milk; sugar to taste

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 ↓

Aunt Marys Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Butter a tart dish.
Sprinkle the bottom with candied peel and a little chopped suet.
Add a thin layer of light bread.
Repeat layers until the dish is full.

Make the custard

In a bowl, whisk together the egg and milk, then sweeten to taste.
Pour the custard over the pudding.

Bake

Bake at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.

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).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 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

Light bread: Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it bakes.
Egg: Sets the milk mixture into a custard that holds the layers together.
Milk: Provides the liquid that the egg sets into a soft, moist custard.
Chopped suet: Adds richness and fat that makes the layers tender and moist.

“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.