Name: Jersey Pudding
Ingredients: 2 oz. ground rice; 1 oz. flour; 2 oz. sugar; 4 oz. butter; 2 oz. chopped raisins; grated lemon rind; 3 eggs; 2 tablespoons milk

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 ↓

Jersey Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Mix the ground rice, flour, sugar, and butter together until well combined.
Add the chopped raisins, grated lemon rind, eggs, and milk; mix well.
Pour the mixture into a mold and boil for 3 hours.

Serve

Serve with lemon sauce.

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).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs: Bind the mixture and add structure as the pudding sets.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender texture.
Ground rice: Provides the main body and a slightly grainy, tender texture.
Flour: Helps thicken the mixture and give it structure.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, sugar, butter, raisin, egg, milk):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, sugar, butter, raisin, egg, milk. 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.