Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓
Bread and Butter 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 the dish
Butter the slices of stale bread thickly.
Sprinkle the buttered slices with sugar.
Fit the bread slices neatly into a buttered pudding dish until half full.
Place a plate on top to keep the bread from floating.
Make and soak
In a bowl, combine hot milk, beaten eggs, sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg to make the custard.
Pour the custard over the bread.
Let the custard soak for 15 minutes.
Remove the plate.
If the bread floats, hold it down with a fork until the custard thickens.
Bake and serve
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.
Serve cold, optionally adding layers of currants.
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.
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Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,187 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
-
Vanilla + nutmegtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,781 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
What each ingredient does
- Stale bread
- Forms the structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding's shape.
- Eggs
- Set when baked, giving the custard its body and binding the pudding together.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard, supplying moisture that softens the bread.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly during baking.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, helping the bread brown and carry flavour.
The step that matters
Holding the bread under the custard. Dry bread floats up out of the custard, leaving exposed dry patches that do not soften or set properly. Keeping the slices submerged lets them soak evenly so the custard can thicken around them.
Swap the currant
The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla, nutmeg):
- Figfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Peachfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla, nutmeg. 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.
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