Name: Almond Chocolate Pudding
Ingredients: 2 pieces sweet chocolate; 1 pint milk; ½ pint bread crumbs; 2 eggs; 1 cup sugar; a little grated nutmeg; ½ cup stoned raisins; ½ cup almonds, chopped

Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Almond Chocolate Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Boil the chocolate in the milk until dissolved.
Pour the chocolate mixture over the bread crumbs.
Add the beaten eggs, sugar, nutmeg, raisins, and chopped almonds.

Cook and serve

Steam or bake for 1 hour.
Serve with cream.

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.

Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Set the pudding into a soft, sliceable custard as they cook.
Bread crumbs: Soak up the chocolate milk to give the pudding its body.
Sweet chocolate: Flavours the milk and gives the pudding its chocolate character.
Milk: Dissolves the chocolate and moistens the crumbs into a custard base.
Almonds: Add nutty flavour and a bit of crunch to the soft pudding.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, milk, bread, egg, sugar, raisin, almond):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegthe original
Gingerfits less well
Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, milk, bread, egg, sugar, raisin, almond. 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.