Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 the bread
Boil the milk and pour it over the stale bread. Let it soak for 1 to 2 hours.
Rub the soaked bread finely with your hands.
Mix and bake
Beat the eggs and add them to the bread mixture.
Stir in the cinnamon, sugar, and butter or suet.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.
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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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,655 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 body of the pudding and soaks up the milk to become soft.
- Milk
- Softens the bread and adds moisture so the pudding sets tender.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard-like texture as it bakes.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
- Butter or suet
- Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, moister crumb.
The step that matters
Soaking the bread in hot milk. The bread must absorb the milk fully and evenly. Dry patches stay chewy, while over-soaked bread turns to mush and loses structure in the bake.
Swap the cinnamon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, sugar, butter):
- Cinnamonthe original
- Nutmegfits about as well
- Parsleyfits less well
- Capersfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, sugar, butter. 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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