Name: Bread- and-Butter Pudding
Ingredients: thin slices of bread; butter; currants; powdered cinnamon; sugar; 4 to 6 eggs; cream or milk; lemon peel; wine or brandy (optional)

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 ↓

Bread- and-Butter Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Butter a pudding dish or mold.
Layer bread and butter slices in the dish, sprinkling currants, cinnamon, and sugar between each layer.
Fill the dish three-quarters full.
In a bowl, beat the eggs with cream or milk and lemon peel to make a custard.
Pour the custard slowly into the dish so the bread absorbs it without floating.
Bake for 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, cinnamon, sugar, egg, cream, lemon):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cinnamon, sugar, egg, cream, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.