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 ↓
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.
Make the pudding
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, combine bread crumbs, eggs, milk, butter, and flour. Mix well and pour into a baking dish.
Bake until set and golden brown.
Make the sauce and serve
For the sauce, mix sugar, flour, and butter in a saucepan.
Add boiling water and stir until thickened.
Serve the bread pudding warm with the sauce.
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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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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Set the custard so the pudding holds its shape when baked.
- Bread crumbs
- Form the body of the pudding and soak up the milk and egg.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that softens the crumbs and forms the custard base.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown in the oven.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the sauce and helps it thicken and turn glossy.
- Flour
- Thickens the sauce so it coats the pudding.
The step that matters
Stir the sauce until thickened. Flour needs to be stirred well into the hot liquid so it gelatinizes evenly; otherwise the sauce stays lumpy or thin.
“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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