Name: Veal-suet Pudding
Ingredients: 3 slices of bread (from a threepenny loaf); 2 quarts new milk; 6 eggs; ½ nutmeg, grated; 1 pound currants; 1 pound veal suet, shredded; Butter (for greasing the dish)

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 ↓

Veal-suet 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.

Prepare

Cut the bread into slices.
Boil and sweeten the milk, then pour it over the bread slices.
Once soaked, pour out a little milk and mix it with the beaten eggs and grated nutmeg.

Assemble and bake

Layer the soaked bread in a buttered dish with currants and shredded veal suet.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) or boil in a basin if preferred.

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.

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).
Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,997 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the custard and help the pudding set as it cooks.
Bread: Soaks up the sweetened milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Veal suet: Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Currants: Add sweetness and chewy fruit pockets throughout the pudding.
New milk: Provides the liquid that soaks the bread and forms the custard.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, egg, nutmeg, veal, butter):

Lemonfits better
Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, nutmeg, veal, butter. 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.