Name: A Ratafia Pudding
Ingredients: water; butter; raisins, stoned; dried cherries; ratafias; 6 penny sponge cakes; 7 large eggs or 8 small eggs; 1½ pints boiling milk; sugar to taste

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Ratafia Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Fill a stewpan with enough water to reach halfway up a three-pint mold and place it on low heat.
Remove the mold from the water and butter the inside well.
Decorate the buttered inside with stoned raisins and dried cherries.
Cover the inside of the mold with ratafias.
Cut the sponge cakes in half and place them in the mold, mixing in some ratafias and dried cherries.
Fill the mold with more ratafias until it is three-quarters full.
Whisk the eggs just to break the yolks, then pour in the boiling milk.
Add sugar to taste and mix well with the whisk.
Pour the mixture into the mold.
Cover the mold with a cloth or lid and place it back into the stewpan.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).