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-and-butter Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Butter a baking dish and layer 3 slices of bread, sprinkling each layer with currants and lemon peel.
Boil 3 cups of milk with bay leaves and mace for 10 minutes.
Remove bay leaves and mace, then beat eggs with 3 cups of cold milk.
Add the hot milk mixture and sugar to the egg mixture.
Pour the custard gently into the dish over the bread layers.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Currant + macetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,791 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, currant, lemon, milk, egg, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, currant, lemon, milk, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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