Name: A Grateful Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; 1 pound grated bread; 8 eggs (4 whites and 4 yolks); 1 pint milk (or cream for improvement); 1 pound stoned raisins; 1 pound currants; ½ pound sugar; 1 teaspoon ground ginger

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,180 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

Beat the eggs and mix them with the milk.
Stir in the grated bread and flour.
Add the raisins, currants, sugar, and ground ginger, and mix well.

Bake

Pour the mixture into a baking dish.
Place the dish in the oven.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Raisin + curranttop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Bread + milktop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together11,363 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Flour + raisintop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together9,071 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + eggtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together22,584 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Raisin + gingertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together1,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Grated bread: Provides the main body and soaks up the milk and eggs.
Flour: Adds structure so the pudding holds its shape when set.
Milk: Moistens the bread and flour and keeps the pudding tender.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar: Sweetens the pudding and aids browning in the oven.

Flavor stand-ins for the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, bread, egg, milk, raisin, currant, sugar):

Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
Nutmegbetter flavor fit
Allspiceabout as good a flavor fit
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, egg, milk, raisin, currant, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.