Name: Neapolitan Pudding
Ingredients: 5 eggs; 1 lemon, juice and grated rind; 1 lb stale sponge cake; 1 lb almond macaroons; ⅓ cup jelly or jam; ⅓ cup sherry wine; 1 cup milk for the crumbs; 1 tablespoon melted butter

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 ↓

Neapolitan Pudding

Ingredients

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.

Cream the melted butter and sugar together.
Beat in the whipped egg yolks, then add the crumbs and lemon until smooth.
Fold in the whipped egg whites.
Butter a mold thickly and cover the bottom with dry bread crumbs.
Layer the bottom with macaroons, wet with sherry wine, and pour on a layer of the mixture.
Add sliced sponge cake spread with jelly, more macaroons wet with wine, and more custard.
Repeat layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with a layer of custard on top.
Cover closely and set in a pan of boiling water.
Cook for 45 minutes in a 350°F (175°C) oven, then remove the cover and brown the top.
Carefully turn out and pour over a sauce made of warmed currant jelly mixed with 2 tablespoons melted butter and a glass of wine.

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).
Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Almond + sherrytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together517 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, lemon, sherry, wine, milk, butter):

Almondthe original
Peasfits about as well
Cocoafits about as well
Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, sherry, wine, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.