Name: Carrot Pudding
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons potato flour; 2-3 tablespoons cream or milk; 1 quart cream or milk; peel of 1 lemon; a bit of cinnamon; sugar to taste

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Carrot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix potato flour with cream or milk.
Boil with the quart of cream or milk, lemon peel, and cinnamon for a few minutes.
Stir in the flour mixture and sweeten.
Cook over heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly.
Pour into a mold and let it cool before turning it out.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Potato + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,012 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, lemon, cinnamon, sugar):

Arrowrootfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Kalefits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, lemon, cinnamon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.