Name: Bread Pudding Another Way
Ingredients: ½ pint milk; 1 stick cinnamon; 1 grated lemon; ½ pound suet, chopped fine; bread (enough to make a pudding); 4 eggs; ¼ teaspoon salt; sugar to taste; nutmeg to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Pudding Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Boil the milk with the stick of cinnamon.
Add the grated lemon, chopped suet, and enough bread to form a pudding.
Beat the mixture well.
Incorporate the eggs, salt, sugar, and nutmeg.

Cook

Boil or bake the pudding.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when cooked.
Bread: Provides the bulk and structure that soaks up the custard and holds the pudding together.
Suet: Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a moist, tender texture.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that moistens the bread and sets with the eggs.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cinnamon, bread, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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.