Name: Bread Pudding, Cheap
Ingredients: stale bread; water; milk; 2 ounces chopped suet; sugar; 1 teaspoon allspice

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 ↓

Bread Pudding, Cheap

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 bread

Soak stale bread pieces in water for some time.
Drain and squeeze out the water from the bread.

Mix and bake

Mix the soaked bread with boiled milk and chopped suet.
Sweeten with sugar and add allspice.
Bake in a buttered pie dish at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 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.

Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Bread + allspicetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together679 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Milk + allspicetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,947 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sugar + allspicetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,938 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Stale bread: Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk and custard-like liquid.
Milk: Provides moisture and softens the bread as it sets during baking.
Chopped suet: Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar: Sweetens the pudding and helps it brown lightly in the oven.