Name: Bread-and-butter Pudding
Ingredients: thin slices of baker's bread, well buttered; currants; 4 large eggs; 1 quart milk; ¼ teaspoon salt; flavoring (such as vanilla or nutmeg)

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 ↓

Bread-and-butter 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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Line the bottom of a pudding dish with buttered bread slices.
Strew currants over the bread layer.
Add another layer of buttered bread and more currants, repeating until the dish is filled.
In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, salt, and flavoring.
Pour the custard mixture over the layered bread and currants.
Let it soak for 1 to 2 hours before baking.

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.

Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
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).
Bread + vanillatop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together497 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).