Name: Newmarket Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint good milk; ½ lemon peel; 1 small stick cinnamon; 1 bay leaf; loaf sugar to taste; 5 egg yolks; 3 egg whites; thinly sliced bread and butter; currants

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 ↓

Newmarket Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

Bring 1 pint of milk to a boil with ½ lemon peel, 1 small stick of cinnamon, and 1 bay leaf.
Boil gently for 5 to 10 minutes.
Sweeten the milk with loaf sugar to taste.
Beat together 5 egg yolks and 3 egg whites in a bowl.
Add the milk mixture to the eggs and beat well.
Strain through a fine sieve.

Assemble and bake

Layer thinly sliced bread, butter, and currants in a pie dish until nearly full.
Pour the custard over the layers.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Yolks and whites thicken the milk into a set custard that holds the bread together.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture that soaks into the bread.
Bread: Forms the layers that absorb the custard and give the pudding its body.
Butter: Adds richness and fat to the layers, helping the bread brown during baking.
Currants: Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit between the bread layers.

The step that matters

Strain through a fine sieve. Straining removes egg strands and chalazae so the custard bakes smooth and even rather than grainy or lumpy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, lemon, cinnamon, sugar, egg, bread, butter):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, cinnamon, sugar, egg, bread, 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.