Name: Baked Plum Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound muscatel raisins; ½ pound currants, washed and picked; ½ pound bread crumbs; ½ pint boiling milk; ½ pound finely chopped suet; 3 eggs, beaten; ¼ pound moist sugar; 1 ounce candied lemon or orange peel; ½ grated nutmeg

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Plum Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
In a large bowl, mix the raisins, currants, bread crumbs, boiling milk, chopped suet, beaten eggs, sugar, candied peel, and nutmeg until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a well-buttered dish or mold.
Bake in the preheated oven for one hour.

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.

Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, milk, egg, sugar, lemon, nutmeg):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Currantthe original

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