Name: Paradise Pudding
Ingredients: 3 apples, peeled, cored, and minced; 1½ cups bread crumbs; 3 oz. sugar; 3 oz. currants; salt to taste; nutmeg to taste; grated rind of ½ lemon; 3 eggs, beaten; butter for greasing

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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 ↓

Paradise Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

In a bowl, mix the minced apples with bread crumbs, sugar, currants, salt, nutmeg, and lemon rind.
Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

Cook and serve

Grease a basin with butter and pour in the mixture.
Cover the basin with a cloth and boil for 1¼ hours.
Serve with sweet 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.

Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,918 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples: Provide moisture and tart fruit flavour that balances the sugar.
Bread crumbs: Absorb liquid and give the pudding its soft, bready body.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown slightly at the surface.
Currants: Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour throughout.

Swap the currant

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

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Peachfits better
Currantthe original

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