Name: Chocolate Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 63 squares of Baker's chocolate; 2 eggs; ½ teaspoon vanilla; sugar to taste; bread crumbs; milk; 1 cup sugar (for hard sauce); ½ cup butter (for hard sauce)

Why it works: Vanilla and milk 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 ↓

Chocolate 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

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over steam or in hot water.
Stir the bread crumbs into the milk.
Add the melted chocolate, beaten eggs, vanilla, and sugar to the mixture.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

For the hard sauce, cream together 1 cup sugar and ½ cup butter.
Serve the pudding warm with the hard sauce.

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.

Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,020 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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: Bind the mixture and help it set into a custard-like texture as it bakes.
Bread crumbs: Soak up the milk and chocolate to give the pudding its body.
Milk: Moistens the bread crumbs and forms the liquid base of the pudding.
Baker's chocolate: Provides the chocolate flavor and richness of the pudding.

“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.