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 ↓
Mazy 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).
In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, butter, and sugar.
Pour the boiling milk over the mixture and cover until cool.
Bake
Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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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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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Bread crumbs
- Provide the body of the pudding, absorbing the milk to form a soft, spoonable base.
- Eggs
- Set during baking to bind the pudding into a tender, custard-like structure.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, contributing to a moist, tender crumb.
- Milk
- Hydrates the bread crumbs and adds moisture and creaminess to the pudding.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
The step that matters
Cooling the milk-soaked crumbs before adding eggs. Eggs added to very hot mixture can begin to scramble unevenly. Letting the crumbs cool until just warm lets the bread fully absorb the milk, so the eggs blend smoothly and set into an even custard.
“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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