Name: Fluid Meat
Ingredients: ¼ pound lean meat; 2 tablespoons white sugar; 6 ounces mucilage of starch or arrowroot

Why it works: Sugar and arrowroot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,073 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Fluid Meat

Ingredients

¼ pound lean meat
2 tablespoons white sugar
6 ounces mucilage of starch or arrowroot

Directions

Liquefy ¼ pound of lean meat by artificial digestion.
Mix 2 tablespoons of the liquefied meat with 2 ounces of white sugar.
Dissolve the mixture in 6 ounces of mucilage of starch or arrowroot.

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 + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,073 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Meat + arrowroottop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together68 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,866 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean meat: Supplies the protein that gives the pudding its main body.
White sugar: Adds sweetness to the liquefied meat mixture.
Mucilage of starch or arrowroot: Thickens the liquid so it sets into a pudding-like texture.