Name: Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint stale bread crumbs; 2 eggs; 1 quart milk; 1 cup sugar; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon nutmeg or cinnamon; Butter for greasing the dish; Raisins or currants (optional)

Why it works: Nutmeg and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. 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

Soak the bread crumbs in 1 quart of milk for 1 hour.
Beat the eggs, then add the sugar, salt, and nutmeg or cinnamon.
Stir the egg mixture into the soaked bread crumbs.
Add raisins or currants if desired.

Bake

Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 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.

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.

Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 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).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs: Absorb the milk and egg mixture, forming the soft body of the pudding.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the pudding its custard-like structure.
Milk: Soaks into the bread and provides the liquid that the eggs set in.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps with browning on the surface.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, milk, sugar, nutmeg, butter):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinthe original
Lemonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, milk, sugar, nutmeg, butter. 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.