Name: Bread Pudding'
Ingredients: ½ pint sweet cream; 3 oz powdered sugar; peel of ½ medium lemon; 10 oz stale bread; 1 oz candied citron; 4 oz dried currants; 4 oz melted butter; 4 oz melted and strained beef marrow; ¼ teaspoon salt

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 ↓

Bread Pudding'

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, combine sweet cream, powdered sugar, and lemon peel. Stir and boil for 3 minutes, then remove from heat.
Cut the crust off the stale bread and dice it into small pieces. Add to the cream mixture and let soak for 10 minutes.
Finely chop the candied citron. In a bowl, mix it with dried currants, melted butter, melted beef marrow, and salt.
Combine this mixture with the soaked bread and mix gently.

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).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, lemon, bread, butter, beef):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Orangefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, lemon, bread, butter, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.