Name: Bread Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 1 lb fresh bread, cut into small pieces; 1 lb raisins; ½ lb suet; ½ lb currants; ½ lb citron; ½ lb sugar; Nutmeg and cinnamon to taste

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

Combine the bread, raisins, suet, currants, citron, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a bowl and mix well.
Place the mixture into a cloth bag.

Cook and serve

Boil the bag in water for half an hour.
Serve with egg sauce.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Fresh bread: Provides the bulk and soft body that holds the pudding together.
Suet: Adds fat that gives the pudding a rich, moist texture.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps balance the spices.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Applefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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.