Name: Canary Pudding
Ingredients: 3 eggs; 3 ounces butter; 3 ounces sugar; 3 ounces flour; a little lemon peel; a pinch of nutmeg; currants for lining the mold

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Canary Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Butter a mold.
Line it with a few currants.

Make the batter

Weigh the eggs and use the same weight in butter, sugar, and flour.
Add a little lemon peel and a pinch of nutmeg, and mix well.

Cook

Steam, boil, or bake in small shapes for 2 hours.

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.

Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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: Provide structure and richness, setting the pudding as they cook.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps give the pudding a light, tender texture.
Flour: Forms the structure of the pudding as the batter sets.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, flour, lemon, nutmeg):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, flour, lemon, nutmeg. 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.