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
Spread butter on the slices of bread.
Layer the bread in a dish, adding currants and optional sliced citron, orange, or lemon between layers.
In a bowl, mix milk, eggs, pimentos, and a little ratafia to create an unboiled custard.
Pour the custard over the layered bread and let it soak for at least 2 hours before baking.
Optionally, use a paste around the edge of the dish for a better appearance.
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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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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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,034 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the orange
The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, currant, milk, egg):
- Figfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Raspberryfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, currant, milk, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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