Name: Apple Amber Pudding
Ingredients: 6 oz. bread crumbs; 2 oz. all-purpose flour; 4 oz. suet, finely chopped; 1 lb. apples, peeled, cored, and chopped; 2 oz. caster sugar; 1 lemon, grated zest; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, grated; 3 eggs; 3 oz. butter, for greasing

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 ↓

Apple Amber Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Boil a large saucepan of water.
Place the flour in a mixing bowl.
Chop the suet finely, add to the flour, and rub together until smooth.
Sift the bread crumbs into the bowl with the flour and suet mixture.
Peel, core, and chop the apples to yield about ½ pound.
Add the bread crumbs, sugar, and chopped apples to the bowl.
Grate the lemon zest and nutmeg into the mixture and combine well.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then mix them into the other ingredients.
Grease a 1-pint mold with butter and pour in the mixture.
Cover the mold with a clean cloth, wrung out in hot and then cold water, and sprinkle with a little flour.

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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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 apple

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

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