Name: Southern Pudding
Ingredients: tart apples, sliced; sugar; grated lemon rind from 1 lemon; stale rusks, soaked in milk; butter, thinly sliced; powdered sugar

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Southern Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

In a baking dish, layer slices of tart apples.
Sprinkle sugar and grated lemon rind over the apples.
Add soaked crumbs of stale rusks on top.
Repeat the layers with more apple slices, sugar, and rusks.
Top with thin slices of butter and sift powdered sugar over it.

Bake and serve

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.
Serve in the same dish.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tart apples: Provide the fruit base that softens and turns tender during baking.
Stale rusks: Soak up milk and form soft, crumb-like layers that hold the pudding together.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the top during baking.
Sugar: Sweetens the apples and helps draw out their juices.