Name: Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 3 pints milk; 1 cup stoned raisins; 4 or 5 eggs; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup butter; stale bread (enough to soak in the milk); spices to taste; 1 tablespoon molasses (optional)

Why it works: Butter and bread 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

Break stale bread into the milk and let it soak on the back of the stove.
Use enough bread so that it thoroughly soaks in the milk for the right consistency.
Add the butter and let it melt, then stir in the sugar.
Beat the eggs well and add them to the mixture, followed by the raisins.
Spice to your preference; you can add molasses for a darker color.
For variation, spread a layer of jelly on top and frost with beaten egg whites mixed with a little sugar.

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.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, butter, bread, molasses):

Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Raisinthe original
Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, bread, molasses. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.