Name: Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 57 pieces of bread; 1 quart skim milk; ½ lb mutton suet; 2 tablespoons sugar; ½ lb currants; 1 packet mixed spice; dripping for greasing

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Soak the bread in skim milk for 3 to 4 hours.
Chop the mutton suet very finely.

Make the pudding

Beat the soaked bread with sugar, suet, currants, and mixed spice.
Grease a tin pie dish and pour the mixture in.
Add pieces of dripping on top.

Bake

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + muttontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,488 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,398 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Bread: Soaked in milk, it softens and forms the body of the pudding.
Skim milk: Soaks into the bread, adding moisture so the pudding stays tender.
Mutton suet: Adds fat that enriches the texture and keeps the pudding moist.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Currants: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bits throughout the pudding.