Name: Brown Bread Pudding
Ingredients: 1 loaf of brown bread, crusts removed; 5 oz bread crumbs; 3 oz castor sugar; 1 lemon, grated rind; ½ teaspoon essence of Vanilla; ½ cup milk; ½ cup cream; 4 eggs, yolks separated; 2 egg whites, reserved

Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Brown Bread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the bread through a wire sieve into a basin.
Boil the milk in a saucepan.
Combine the bread crumbs and sugar in the basin.
Grate the lemon rind over the mixture and add the essence of Vanilla.
Pour the boiling milk over the bread mixture.
Whip the cream to stiff peaks and fold it into the mixture.
Stir in the egg yolks one at a time.
Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.
Butter a pint mold and pour the mixture into it.
Butter a piece of kitchen paper and place it over the top.

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.

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.

Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Swap the lemon

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

Figfits better
Strawberryfits better
Raspberryfits better
Lemonthe original

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