Name: Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 5 oz. bread crumbs; 7 oz. flour; 4 oz. suet; 5 oz. raisins; 4 oz. currants; 2 oz. moist sugar; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 2 eggs; ½ cup milk

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

Boil a large saucepan of water.
Grate 5 oz. of bread crumbs.
Chop 4 oz. of suet finely after removing the skin.
Sprinkle flour over the suet to prevent sticking.
Wash 4 oz. of currants in cold water and dry them with a cloth.
Check currants for stones by dropping them onto a plate.
Stone 5 oz. of raisins.
In a basin, combine 7 oz. of flour, chopped suet, ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, and 1 teaspoon baking powder.
Rub the suet into the flour until no lumps remain.
Add the bread crumbs, currants, raisins, and 2 oz. of sugar, mixing well with a wooden spoon.
In a separate bowl, beat 2 eggs with ½ cup of milk.
Stir the egg mixture into the pudding mixture.

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).
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).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 (bread, flour, raisin, sugar, egg, milk):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Datesfits better
Currantthe original

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