Name: Rhubarb Pudding
Ingredients: Butter for greasing; 1 cup fine bread crumbs; 2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces; 2 cups raw rhubarb, cut into ½-inch pieces; 12 raisins, seeded and halved; 2 tablespoons sugar; 1 teaspoon grated orange peel

Why it works: Rhubarb and orange work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 299 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pudding

Ingredients

Butter for greasing
1 cup fine bread crumbs
2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
2 cups raw rhubarb, cut into ½-inch pieces
12 raisins, seeded and halved
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon grated orange peel

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.

Prepare the dish

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Butter a pudding dish and cover the bottom with 1 cup of fine bread crumbs.
Sprinkle the crumbs with bits of butter.

Layer and bake

Layer the raw rhubarb pieces over the crumbs.
Scatter the halved raisins and sugar over the rhubarb.
Cover with more buttered crumbs, then add more rhubarb until the dish is full.
Top with a final layer of buttered crumbs, sugar, and grated orange peel.
Bake covered for 1 hour, then uncover and brown the top.
Serve hot with 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.

Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together299 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Rhubarb + raisintop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together47 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,684 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Form the base and layers that soak up the rhubarb juices and hold the dish together.
Rhubarb: Provides the tart fruit filling that softens during baking.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the crumbs brown on top.
Sugar: Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps the top brown.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, rhubarb, raisin, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Applefits better
Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, rhubarb, raisin, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.