Name: Weymouth Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups stale bread crumbs; 1 cup hot milk; 1 cup finely chopped suet; 1 cup chopped figs; 1 cup chopped raisins; 1 cup sugar; ½ teaspoon salt; 3 eggs; juice and grated yellow rind of 1 lemon

Why it works: Fig and raisin work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Weymouth Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Soak the stale bread crumbs in hot milk.
In a large bowl, combine the soaked bread crumbs, chopped suet, figs, raisins, sugar, salt, eggs, lemon juice, and lemon rind. Beat all the ingredients well together.

Steam

Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold.
Steam the pudding for three hours.

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.

Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together737 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,026 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + figtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together374 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together763 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs: Soak up the hot milk to form the body of the pudding.
Suet: Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist as it steams.
Eggs: Bind the mixture together and help it set as it cooks.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding its tender, moist crumb.
Figs: Contribute fruity sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Raisins: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Datesfits better
Applefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, fig, raisin, sugar, egg. 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.