Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Bread, Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard base
Boil the milk with butter and mace.
Pour the hot mixture over the tea-cakes or roll and let it cool.
Bake or boil and serve
Beat in the eggs, sugar, currants, lemon peel, and salt.
Bake or boil the mixture; if baked, turn it out of the dish.
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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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Tea + lemontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together610 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Milk + teatop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together738 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,791 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Bind the mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
- Tea-cakes or wench roll
- Provide the bready body that soaks up the milk and holds the pudding together.
- Milk
- Softens the bread and forms the liquid base that the eggs set in.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a soft, tender texture to the pudding.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the pudding and adds to its browning when baked.
- Currants
- Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the pudding.
The step that matters
Let the bread soak after pouring the hot milk. The bread needs time to absorb the hot liquid so it softens evenly. If the mixture is not given time to cool and soak, the bread stays dry in pockets and the eggs may cook unevenly when baked.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, tea, egg, sugar, currant, lemon):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Gingerfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, tea, egg, sugar, currant, lemon. 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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