Name: Baked Bread Pudding
Ingredients: stale rolls; butter (for greasing); 6 eggs; 1 quart milk; 1 cup white sugar; a little spice (your choice); cold sauce (for serving)

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Butter a pudding dish and fill it with stale rolls.

Make the custard

In a bowl, beat the eggs, then mix in the milk, sugar, and spice.
Pour the egg mixture over the rolls.
Place a plate over the rolls to press them down into the milk.

Rest, bake and serve

Let the mixture stand for 4 to 5 hours.
Bake for about 1 hour.
Serve with cold sauce.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 rolls: Their dry, porous crumb soaks up the egg and milk mixture to form the pudding's body.
Eggs: They set when baked, giving the pudding its firm, custard-like structure.
Milk: Provides the liquid that the bread absorbs and that the eggs set into custard.
White sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown slightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Pressing the rolls under the milk mixture. Dry bread floats and stays unevenly soaked unless it is pressed down. Full absorption during the rest gives an even, moist texture instead of dry patches on top and a soggy base.

“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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Baked Bread Pudding