Name: Baked Bread Pudding
Ingredients: pieces of bread; butter; milk; sugar; eggs; vanilla extract; raisins (optional)

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 ↓

Baked Bread Pudding

Ingredients

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.

Save and keep clean leftover pieces of bread, butter, and toast.
Weigh the bread the day before making the pudding.
Soak the bread in milk until soft.
Mix in melted butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract.
Add raisins if desired.
Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden brown.

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.

Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (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

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, milk, sugar, egg, vanilla):

Figfits better
Peachfits better
Coconutfits better
Raisinthe original

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