Name: Peach Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart dried peaches; 3 pints boiling milk; 1 quart fine bread crumbs; 5 tablespoons all-purpose flour; 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon; ⅓ cup brandy; ½ pound suet, chopped; 2 tablespoons brown sugar; 8 or 9 eggs, beaten separately

Why it works: Peach and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 625 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Peach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the dried peaches well in four changes of water.
Pour the boiling milk over the bread crumbs in a large bowl.

Make and cook the pudding

Add the flour, cinnamon, brandy, suet, brown sugar, and beaten eggs to the mixture and stir until well combined.
Boil the mixture for three hours.
Serve with wine 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.

Peach + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together625 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together781 recipes

Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 help give the pudding its set structure as they cook.
Bread crumbs: Soak up the hot milk and form the body of the pudding.
Suet: Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
All-purpose flour: Thickens the mixture and adds structure to the pudding.
Dried peaches: Provide fruit flavor and sweetness to the pudding.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, flour, cinnamon, brandy, sugar, egg):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, bread, flour, cinnamon, brandy, sugar, egg. 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.