Name: A Family Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint boiling milk; 2 cloves; 1 blade of mace; 1 piece of lemon peel; 2 eggs, beaten; 2 tablespoons currants or sultana raisins; Slices of bread; Butter; Grated nutmeg

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

A Family Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

Soak pieces of bread in 1 pint of boiling milk until soft.
Beat the soaked bread and add another pint of boiling milk with cloves, mace, and lemon peel.
Mix in the beaten eggs and currants or sultana raisins.

Bake

Top the mixture with thin slices of buttered bread, sprinkled with currants and grated nutmeg.
Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°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.

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.

Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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).
Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Soaked in milk, it softens and forms the body of the pudding.
Eggs: Set when baked, binding the soaked bread into a custard-like texture.
Milk: Soaks into the bread and provides moisture for a tender, custardy interior.
Currants or sultana raisins: Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Butter: Coats the top slices, promoting browning and a crisp, rich surface.

The step that matters

Bake in a brisk oven. Too low a heat leaves the custard watery before the eggs set, while the buttered top needs enough heat to brown well.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, clove, lemon, egg, currant, bread, butter):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, clove, lemon, egg, currant, bread, 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.