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
Prepare the custard base
Cut the bread into very thin slices.
Soak the bread in milk over a chafing dish until it absorbs all the milk.
Add butter, stir, and let it cool.
Beat the egg yolks and whites with rose-water, nutmeg, salt, and sugar.
Mix everything together and place it in a cloth, tying it loosely.
Cook and serve
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
- Bread crumb
- Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the milk and eggs.
- Milk
- Softens the bread and provides the liquid that sets with the eggs.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and help the pudding set into a tender custard.
- Egg whites
- Add lift and help bind the pudding into a firmer texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, giving a softer, more flavorful crumb.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the savory notes of the eggs and butter.
The step that matters
Tying the cloth loosely. The pudding needs room to expand as it cooks. Bound too tightly, the cloth restricts swelling and can leave a dense, uneven texture.
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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