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
Soak the bread
Cut the crumb of a penny loaf into very thin slices.
Soak the bread in 1 quart of milk over a low heat until it absorbs all the milk, then add a piece of butter and stir the mixture.
Let it cool.
Make the custard
Boil the milk.
Pour the boiled milk over the bread.
Cover the bread until it absorbs the milk.
Beat the yolks of 6 eggs and the whites of 3 with rose water, nutmeg, salt, and sugar.
Mix everything well.
Boil and serve
Place the mixture in a cloth.
Tie the cloth loosely to allow for expansion.
Boil for 1 hour.
Serve with melted butter poured over it.
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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Rose + nutmegtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,067 recipes
Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
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Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together14,685 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together24,377 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Penny loaf crumb
- Provides the bulk and structure that the milk and eggs soak into and set around.
- Eggs
- Egg proteins coagulate when heated, setting the soaked bread into a tender, sliceable pudding.
- Milk
- Supplies the liquid that the bread absorbs and that the eggs set into a custard.
- Butter
- Adds fat, which gives the pudding richer flavour and a softer, more tender crumb.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the savoury eggs and milk.
- Rose water
- Contributes a floral aroma that comes through the custard.
The step that matters
Tie the cloth loosely to allow for expansion.. The pudding swells as it heats and steam forms inside it. A tight cloth restricts that expansion, which can make the pudding dense or cause it to burst.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, rose, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegthe original
- Allspicefits less well
- Gingerfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, rose, sugar. 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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