Name: Plain Currant Pudding
Ingredients: 1 lb suet pudding mix; 3 oz currants or sultanas; Coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); Syrup sauce for serving

Why it works: Syrup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Plain Currant Pudding

Ingredients

1 lb suet pudding mix
3 oz currants or sultanas
Coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')
Syrup sauce for serving

Directions

Prepare

Clean the currants.
Mix the currants with the suet pudding mix.
Place the mixture in a greased basin.
Cover with a scalded and floured cloth or greased paper.

Cook and serve

Boil or steam for 3 hours.
Allow to shrink before turning out.
Serve with syrup 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.

Syrup + saucetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together173 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Currant + syruptop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together329 recipes
Currant + saucetop 35% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together628 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Suet pudding mix: Forms the bulk of the pudding, providing structure and a light, tender crumb when steamed.
Currants: Add pockets of sweetness and fruit flavour distributed through the pudding.