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 Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bread
Cut the bread into very thin slices.
Soak the bread in milk over a chafing dish until it absorbs all the milk.
Make the custard mixture
Add butter and stir.
Let it cool.
Beat the egg yolks and whites with rose water, nutmeg, salt, and sugar.
Mix everything together.
Boil and serve
Place the mixture in a cloth, tying it loosely to allow for swelling.
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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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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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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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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Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,997 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Bread
- Forms the body of the pudding, soaking up milk and eggs to set into a soft crumb.
- Milk
- Moistens the bread and, with the eggs, forms the liquid base that sets when cooked.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and help the mixture set into a tender, custard-like texture.
- Egg whites
- Add structure and lightness, helping the pudding hold together and swell as it cooks.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps balance the savory-tasting egg and milk base.
The step that matters
Tying the cloth loosely. The pudding swells as the eggs and bread heat and expand. A tight cloth restricts that expansion and can burst or make the pudding dense.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, milk, butter, egg, rose, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits about as well
- Nutmegthe original
- Allspicefits less well
- Parsleyfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, 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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