Name: Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 8 egg yolks; 4 egg whites; ½ cup milk; 1 lb flour; 1 lb raisins; 1 lb currants; 1 lb beef suet; ½ cup milk; 1 oz powdered ginger

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Mix the yolks of 8 eggs with the whites of 4, beaten well, and ½ cup of milk to form a fine batter.
Add 1 lb of flour, 1 lb of washed and dried raisins, 1 lb of currants, and 1 lb of beef suet, cut into larger pieces.
Mix all ingredients thoroughly, then add another ½ cup of milk and 1 oz of powdered ginger.

Cook

Boil the mixture for six hours.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,242 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks and whites: Eggs bind the batter and give it structure as they set during cooking.
Flour: Provides the starch that gives the pudding its body and firm structure.
Beef suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants: Add concentrated fruit flavour and a chewy texture.
Milk: Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and loosen the batter.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, flour, raisin, beef, ginger):

Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, raisin, beef, ginger. 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.