Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Madeira Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare a butter or suet crust and roll it out thinly.
Cut the crust into rounds the size of the tin you will use.
Butter the tin and place a layer of crust at the bottom.
Add a layer of light-colored jam, then another layer of crust.
Repeat with a layer of red jam and more crust until the tin is filled.
Boil the pudding in a cloth for 2.5 hours.
Carefully turn it out and dust with white sugar before serving.
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.
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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