Name: Brown Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 1 loaf of stale brown bread; ½ cup milk; ⅓ cup cream; 5 oz bread crumbs; 3 oz castor sugar; 1 lemon (zest only); ½ teaspoon essence of vanilla; 4 eggs (yolks only); 2 egg whites

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 ↓

Brown Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the crust from the stale brown bread and crumble it finely.
Boil the milk in a saucepan.
In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs and castor sugar.
Grate the lemon zest over the bread mixture and add the vanilla essence.
Pour the boiling milk over the bread mixture.
Whip the cream until stiff and fold it into the mixture along with the egg yolks.
Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.
Butter a 1-pint mold and pour the mixture into it.
Cover the mold with buttered kitchen paper.

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.

Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the lemon

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

Figfits better
Strawberryfits better
Raspberryfits better
Lemonthe original

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