Name: Hasty Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart milk; 4 eggs; 6 tablespoons flour; 1 cup sugar; 1 egg (for sauce); nutmeg (to taste); 1 teacup boiling water; butter (size of an egg); juice and grated rind of 1 lemon

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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 ↓

Hasty Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine milk, eggs, and flour. Mix well.
For the sauce, beat together sugar, 1 egg, nutmeg, and butter.
Gradually add boiling water to the sauce mixture, stirring continuously.
Season the sauce with lemon juice and grated rind.
Serve the pudding warm with the sauce poured over it.

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.

Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, flour, sugar, sauce, nutmeg, butter):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Lemonthe original

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