Name: Substantial Bread Puddings
Ingredients: crusts or slices of Allinson bread; hot water; currants; raisins; chopped nuts or almonds; 1 beaten egg; milk; sugar; spice

Why it works: Raisin and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Substantial Bread Puddings

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.

Soak the bread in hot water.
Break the soaked bread into a pie dish.
Add currants, raisins, chopped nuts or almonds, beaten egg, milk, sugar, and spice.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set.
Alternatively, tie the mixture in a pudding cloth and boil.
Serve with white sauce or stewed fresh fruit.

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.

Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, nuts, egg, milk, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Datesfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, nuts, egg, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.