Name: Bread-and-butter Pudding
Ingredients: slices of buttered bread; currants; candy peel; nutmeg

Why it works: Bread and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,997 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Bread-and-butter Pudding

Ingredients

slices of buttered bread
currants
candy peel
nutmeg

Directions

Butter a baking dish.
Layer thin slices of buttered bread at the bottom.
Sprinkle washed and picked currants over the bread.
Add thinly cut candy peel and a little grated nutmeg.
Repeat the layers until the dish is full.

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 + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,997 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,983 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Bread + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,398 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).