Name: Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 25 pounds stale bread; 8 pounds raisins; 6 cans condensed milk (or 10 quarts fresh milk); 2 tablespoons salt; cinnamon for dredging

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. 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 stale bread in cold water and drain.
Add the washed raisins and the milk with dissolved salt.
Mix all ingredients together.

Bake

Place the mixture in greased pans.
Dredge the top with cinnamon.
Bake until brown at 350°F (175°C).

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.

Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,111 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,705 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Condensed milk + cinnamontop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together158 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Raisin + condensed milktop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 custard.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy pockets of moisture throughout the pudding.
Condensed milk: Provides sweetness and richness, and helps the pudding set as it bakes.