Name: Cossack Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; ¾ pound stoned raisins; ¾ pound fat from salt pork, well washed and chopped; 2 tablespoons sugar or treacle; ½ pint water

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cossack Plum Pudding

Ingredients

1 pound flour
¾ pound stoned raisins
¾ pound fat from salt pork, well washed and chopped
2 tablespoons sugar or treacle
½ pint water

Directions

Mix flour, raisins, pork fat, sugar, and water together.
Place the mixture into a tightly tied cloth.
Boil for 4 hours, or 2 hours if time is short.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,187 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + porktop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together193 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and pork barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the bulk and structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Raisins: Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Pork fat: Adds richness and moisture, keeping the pudding from drying out during boiling.
Sugar or treacle: Adds sweetness and a deeper flavour to the pudding.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth tightly. A tight seal keeps water out of the pudding during the long boil. Loose cloth lets water soak in, making the pudding soggy and dense rather than cohesive.

“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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Cossack Plum Pudding