Name: Jellied Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 3 tart apples, pared and quartered; 1 cup nuts, chopped; ½ lb stoned dates, cut into ½-inch pieces; ⅓ cup brown sugar; 1 cup raisins; 2 cups water; gelatin

Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Jellied Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, combine brown sugar and water to make a syrup.
Gently simmer the quartered apples in the syrup until tender.
For the last 10 minutes, add the raisins and dates to the apples.
Stir in the gelatin until dissolved, then add the chopped nuts.
Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.
Slice and serve with sauce or whipped 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.

Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,778 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Apple + datestop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together119 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Dates + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together358 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,920 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, dates, sugar, raisin, gelatin):

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pecansfits about as well
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, dates, sugar, raisin, gelatin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.