Name: Strawberry Pudding
Ingredients: cakes; jam; wine; strawberries; sugar; cream; custard; whole strawberries

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the cakes lengthwise and spread each half with jam.
Build the jammed pieces in a shape that fits your serving dish.
Pierce holes in the cakes with a skewer to allow the wine to soak in.
Pour the wine over the cakes and let them soak for about 1 hour.
Mash the strawberries with the sugar.
Whisk the cream until stiff, then mix it with the mashed strawberries.
Pour the custard over and around the cakes.
Heap the cream and strawberry mixture on top and decorate with whole strawberries.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,887 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together9,581 recipes

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