Name: A Plain Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 1 French roll, crumbled; 1 pint milk; 2 cloves; 1 small blade of mace; 2 bay leaves; 3 eggs, beaten; 2 tablespoons moist sugar; 2 tablespoons currants, well-washed and picked; butter for greasing

Why it works: Clove and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

A Plain Bread Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

In a bowl, combine the crumbled French roll and milk.
Boil the milk with cloves, mace, and bay leaves, then remove the spices.

Make the pudding

Add the beaten eggs, sugar, and currants to the milk mixture and mix well.
Pour the mixture into a well-buttered dish.

Bake

Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

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.

Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,400 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,791 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Clove + curranttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,038 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

French roll: Its bread crumb soaks up the milk and forms the body of the pudding.
Milk: Moistens the bread and, with the eggs, sets into a soft custard as it bakes.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set when baked, giving the pudding its structure.
Moist sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Currants: Add small pockets of sweet, chewy fruit throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Boil the milk with the spices, then remove them. Boiling extracts flavour from the cloves, mace and bay leaves into the milk. Leaving the spices in too long can make the pudding bitter or overpowering, so they must be removed before the eggs are added.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, clove, egg, sugar, currant, butter):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, clove, egg, sugar, currant, 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.

More bread pudding recipes

Apple 145 Chocolate 53 Brown 51 Fruit 44 Lemon 37 Steamed 29 See all 1,021 →

Red Currant Jelly65 recipes

Clove Cake53 recipes

Currant Ice Cream32 recipes

Currant Sherbet9 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

A Plain Bread Pudding