Name: Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart stale bread, sliced; 2 cups sweet milk; 6 eggs, beaten; 1 tablespoon butter

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

1 quart stale bread, sliced
2 cups sweet milk
6 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon butter

Directions

Prepare

Place the sliced bread in a deep dish.
Cover the bread with sweet milk and beaten eggs.
Add the butter and mash the mixture together.

Cook and serve

Boil the mixture wrapped in a towel.
Serve with wine 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.

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.

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).
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).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Stale bread: Provides the structure, soaking up the milk and egg custard so the pudding holds together.
Eggs: Set when heated, binding the bread and milk into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Sweet milk: Forms the liquid custard base, adding moisture and softness to the bread.
Butter: Adds fat, giving the pudding richness and a smoother texture.

“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.