Name: Cabinet Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart milk; 4 eggs; 4 tablespoons sugar; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon butter; 3 pints stale sponge cake; 1 cup raisins; chopped citron; currants (use more currants than citron and raisins)

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 ↓

Cabinet Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Preheat your steamer.
Beat the eggs, sugar, and salt together, then add the milk.
Butter a 3-pint pudding mold and sprinkle the sides and bottom with the chopped fruits.

Assemble and rest

Layer the stale sponge cake over the fruit, then add more fruit, and repeat until all ingredients are used.
Gradually pour the custard mixture over the layered cake and fruit.
Let the pudding stand for 2 hours.

Steam and serve

Steam the pudding for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Serve with wine or creamy 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the custard and help it set firm when steamed.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the custard that soaks into the cake.
Stale sponge cake: Absorbs the custard and gives the pudding its body and structure.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the eggs and dried fruit.