Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Bread Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bread
Cut the crumb of the penny loaf into thin slices.
Soak the bread in a quart of milk over a chafing dish until absorbed.
Add butter, stir, and let it cool.
Make the pudding
Beat the yolks, whites, rose water, nutmeg, salt, and sugar together.
Mix the egg mixture with the soaked bread.
Tie the mixture in a cloth loosely and boil for 1 hour.
Serve
Serve with melted butter poured over it.
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.
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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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Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,067 recipes
Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together14,685 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together24,377 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Penny loaf
- Forms the body of the pudding and absorbs the milk and egg to set into a soft mass.
- Milk
- Soaks into the bread and gives the custard its liquid base and moisture.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the mixture and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture.
- Egg whites
- Add structure and lightness, helping the pudding hold together when cooked.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a smoother mouthfeel.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the eggs and milk.
The step that matters
Tie the mixture in a cloth loosely and boil for 1 hour. The pudding needs room to swell as the bread and egg set. Tying it loosely keeps it from becoming dense, and a steady gentle boil cooks the eggs through evenly without toughening them.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, rose, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegthe original
- Allspicefits less well
- Gingerfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, rose, sugar. 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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