Name: A Grateful Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; 1 pound grated bread; 8 eggs (4 whole, 4 whites only); 1 pint milk; 1 pound raisins (stoned); 1 pound currants; ½ pound sugar; 1 teaspoon ground ginger

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,180 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix with the milk.
Stir in the flour, grated bread, raisins, currants, sugar, and ginger until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake and serve

Bake in the oven until golden brown.
Serve warm.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Raisin + curranttop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Bread + milktop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together11,363 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Flour + raisintop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together9,071 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + eggtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together22,584 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Raisin + gingertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together1,242 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Set the custard and bind the bread and fruit together into a firm pudding.
Grated bread: Soaks up the egg and milk mixture to form the body of the pudding.
Milk: Moistens the mixture and helps create a soft, tender crumb.
Flour: Adds structure and body so the pudding holds together when cut.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown during baking.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

Flavor stand-ins for the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, bread, egg, milk, raisin, currant, sugar):

Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
Nutmegbetter flavor fit
Allspiceabout as good a flavor fit
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, egg, milk, raisin, currant, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.