Why it works: Milk and vanilla 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 ↓
Brown Bread Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bread mixture
Rub the crumb of the brown loaf through a fine sieve into a bowl.
In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.
Mix the bread crumbs with the caster sugar in a basin.
Add the lemon zest and vanilla extract to the bread mixture.
Pour the boiling milk over the bread mixture and stir well.
Enrich and shape
In another bowl, whip the cream until stiff and fold it into the mixture.
Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing thoroughly.
Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.
Grease a pudding mold with butter and pour in the mixture.
Steam and serve
Cover the top with buttered kitchen paper.
Place the mold in boiling water, ensuring the water is halfway up the mold.
Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Remove the paper and carefully turn the pudding onto a hot dish.
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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Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,187 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
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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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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar and vanilla 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
- Brown loaf crumb
- Forms the bulk of the pudding and soaks up the liquid to create its body.
- Eggs
- Yolks enrich and set the custard, while whipped whites lighten the texture.
- Milk
- Soaks into the bread and provides moisture so the pudding stays tender.
- Cream
- Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, silkier mouthfeel.
- Caster sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and helps moisten the bread crumb.
The step that matters
Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites must be whipped until stiff and folded gently, otherwise the air is knocked out and the pudding turns dense rather than light.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, vanilla, egg, butter):
- Strawberryfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, sugar, vanilla, egg, 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.
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