Name: Marmalade Puddings
Ingredients: ½ pound suet; ½ pound grated bread crumbs; ½ pound sugar; 3 ounces orange marmalade; 4 eggs; raisins (for garnish); butter (for sauce); 2 ounces white lager; lemon (for flavoring)

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Marmalade Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Mix the suet, bread crumbs, sugar, orange marmalade, and eggs together in a bowl.
Pour the mixture into a mold, placing some open raisins at the bottom.
Boil the pudding for 4 hours.

Make the sauce and serve

For the sauce, mix butter and white lager, then beat until creamy.
Flavor the sauce with lemon before serving.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,684 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet: Adds richness and fat that keeps the pudding moist and tender.
Bread crumbs: Provides the bulk that holds the pudding together and gives it body.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a softer crumb.
Orange marmalade: Adds sweetness, acidity and citrus aroma throughout the pudding.
Butter: Adds fat and smoothness to the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, egg, raisin, butter, sauce, lemon):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Orangethe original
Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, raisin, butter, sauce, lemon. 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.