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
Prepare
Boil the grated peel of the Seville orange in the milk.
Pour the milk over the sliced crumb of the bread and cover for 1 hour.
Beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.
Make the pudding
Mix the eggs with the bread and milk mixture and beat for 10 minutes.
Sweeten to taste and pour into a buttered basin.
Boil for 1 hour.
Serve
Serve with melted butter and sugar sauce.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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).
-
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
-
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
-
Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,696 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Egg proteins set as they heat, giving the pudding its firm, sliceable structure.
- Bread crumb
- Soaks up the milk and gives the pudding its soft, absorbent body.
- Milk
- Supplies the liquid that moistens the bread and forms the custard base.
- Seville orange peel
- Its peel oils add a bright, bitter-citrus aroma to the milk.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the orange peel.
The step that matters
Boil for 1 hour. Egg proteins set gradually with gentle, steady heat. Heat that is too fierce or cooking too long can make the pudding rubbery and weep liquid.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, egg, sugar, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Peachfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, egg, sugar, butter. 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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