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English Monkey

A cheese bread pudding made with stale bread crumbs, milk, butter, cheese, mustard, cayenne, egg, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

English Monkey

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese base

  1. Soak the stale bread crumbs in milk for 1.5 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  3. Add the cheese in small pieces and let it melt.

  4. Stir in the soaked bread and milk, salt, mustard, and cayenne.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, mix in the beaten egg.

  2. Pour the mixture over small pieces of toasted bread.

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.

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.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Soak up milk to give the pudding a soft, body-filled texture.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture so the mixture stays creamy.
Butter
Melts into the base to add richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Cheese
Melts into the base to add savory flavor and a rich, creamy body.
Egg
Sets with gentle heat to bind the pudding and give it structure.

The step that matters

Just before serving, mix in the beaten egg.. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding it late keeps the mixture from overcooking, curdling, or turning grainy and rubbery.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, cheese, egg. 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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