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 ↓
Queen's 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 pudding
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Combine bread crumbs and milk in a bowl.
Beat in the eggs, reserving 2 egg whites.
Add sugar, butter, and nutmeg; mix well.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake until set.
Top and serve
Spread currant jelly or fruit preserves on top after baking.
Beat the reserved egg whites with 2 tablespoons of sugar until stiff.
Spread the beaten egg whites over the pudding.
Serve with a sauce of sugar and butter or sweetened cream.
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.
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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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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,147 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread crumbs
- Form the body of the pudding by soaking up milk and setting into a soft custard base.
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set firm when baked, giving structure to the custard.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that softens the bread and forms the custard with the eggs.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the egg whites hold their stiff, glossy meringue texture.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat that gives the pudding a smoother, more tender texture.
The step that matters
Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks; underbeaten whites stay runny and slide off the pudding, while the sugar stabilises the foam so the topping stays puffed and holds its shape in the oven.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg, sauce):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Raisinfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg, sauce. 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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