Name: Little Bread Puddings
Ingredients: 1 pint bread crumbs; 1 pint milk; 2 eggs; 2 tablespoons sugar; 1 tablespoon melted butter; a few currants, well floured; nutmeg for grating

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 ↓

Little Bread Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Soak the bread crumbs in milk until soft.
Add the beaten eggs, sugar, melted butter, flavoring, and floured currants.

Bake

Pour the mixture into buttered round tins.
Grate a little nutmeg over each tin.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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 crumbs: Absorb the milk and form the soft body of the pudding.
Milk: Soaks the bread and gives the custard its moisture and softness.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and set it into a tender custard as it bakes.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Melted butter: Adds richness and fat, giving a softer, more tender crumb.

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg. 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.