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 ↓
A Bread Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the base
Sweeten the milk with sugar and add salt.
Pour the boiling milk over the bread crumbs and add butter.
Cover with a plate and let sit for at least 30 minutes.
Stir in the well-whisked eggs and flavoring.
Mold and boil
Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold that holds 1½ pints.
Tie a paper and cloth tightly over the mold.
Boil the pudding for exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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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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Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable custard-like pudding.
- Bread crumbs
- Absorb the hot milk to form the soft body of the pudding.
- Milk
- Soaks into the crumbs and provides the liquid that gives the pudding its moist texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and adds flavor to the custard base.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb.
The step that matters
Boil the pudding for exactly 1 hour and 10 minutes. Boiling gently with the mold tightly covered lets the egg-thickened custard set through without water entering the mold. Too little time leaves it loose, while overboiling can make the texture rubbery or cause the mold to leak.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, bread, butter, egg):
- Cinnamonfits about as well
- Nutmegthe original
- Parsleyfits less well
- Capersfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, bread, butter, egg. 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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