Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Bun 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).
Arrange stale buns in a dish without crowding.
Make the custard and soak
In a bowl, mix 5 eggs with 1 quart of milk, adding sugar and spices to taste.
Pour the custard over the buns and let it soak for 1 to 2 hours.
If the custard is absorbed, add more custard to fill the dish.
Bake
Bake for 1.5 hours until set.
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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Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 buns
- Their dry, open crumb soaks up custard and holds the pudding's structure as it sets.
- Eggs
- Proteins coagulate when heated, setting the custard into a sliceable, tender body.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that the buns absorb and that the eggs thicken into custard.
The step that matters
Letting the buns soak before baking. Stale bread needs time to absorb the custard fully. If the buns are still dry inside when baked, the pudding can set unevenly, with dry pockets and a watery layer at the bottom.
“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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