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Bread and Milk

A simple porridge made by soaking bread in milk, adding oatmeal, and boiling with optional ale, wine, or brandy, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread and Milk

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the bread

  1. Heat the milk until just boiling.

  2. Pour the hot milk over the bread and cover for 5 minutes.

Make the caudle

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of oatmeal with 3 tablespoons of cold water for thin caudle, or 2 tablespoons for thick.

  2. In a saucepan, bring 1 pint of boiling water or milk to a boil.

  3. Gradually add the oatmeal mixture to the boiling liquid, stirring constantly to prevent sticking.

  4. Boil for a few minutes, then skim and strain through a fine sieve.

Finish

  1. Add ale, wine, or brandy, along with sugar and nutmeg to taste.

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.

  1. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Bread
Soaked in hot milk, it softens and gives the porridge body and a smooth texture.
Oatmeal
Its starch swells in boiling liquid, thickening the caudle.
Milk
Provides the liquid base, adding moisture and a soft, creamy richness.

The step that matters

Adding the oatmeal mixture to the boiling liquid. Oat starch clumps if it goes in all at once. Adding it gradually while stirring constantly disperses the starch evenly, so it thickens smoothly and does not stick and scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, wine, 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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