Name: Plum Pudding Glace
Ingredients: ¼ pound chocolate; ¼ pound stoned raisins; ¼ pound currants; 2 ounces citron; 1 pint sherry wine; 2 quarts sweetened vanilla cream

Why it works: Chocolate and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,020 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Plum Pudding Glace

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the chocolate in the sherry wine.
Mix in the raisins, currants, and citron, then stew for 5 minutes.
Allow the mixture to cool.
Combine with the sweetened vanilla cream and freeze.

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.

Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,020 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Sherry + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together506 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,466 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, currant, sherry, wine, vanilla, cream):

Raspberryfits better
Strawberryfits better
Pineapplefits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, currant, sherry, wine, vanilla, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.