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 ↓
Cream Pudding
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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Grease a pie plate and sprinkle with stale bread crumbs to form a crust.
Make the custard
In a bowl, stir together the cream, sugar, egg yolks, and grated coconut or nutmeg.
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.
Bake and serve
Pour the cream mixture into the pie plate.
Sprinkle a layer of bread crumbs on top.
Bake until set and lightly browned.
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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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,467 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
What each ingredient does
- Cream
- Provides richness and moisture, giving the pudding a soft, tender body when set.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard as they set, giving structure and a smooth texture.
- Egg whites
- Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and help the pudding rise and hold air.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface during baking.
- Stale bread crumbs
- Form a crust on the base and top, adding texture and absorbing some moisture.
The step that matters
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air when beaten, and overmixing or deflating them removes that air, leading to a denser, less light pudding. Folding keeps the foam intact.
Swap the coconut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, egg, bread, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Raspberryfits about as well
- Coconutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, bread, butter. 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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