Name: Apricot Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint milk or cream; 6 eggs; 4 tablespoons fine flour; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; apricots (enough to thicken the mixture); sugar (to taste); butter (for greasing and serving)

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 ↓

Apricot Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Whip the milk or cream with the eggs, flour, salt, and cinnamon.
Rub the apricots through a sieve and add enough pulp to thicken the mixture.
Sweeten to taste.

Cook and serve

Pour the mixture into a buttered basin.
Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Serve with melted butter.

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).
Cinnamon + apricottop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together618 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Eggs: Set the mixture into a custard-like pudding as they cook.
Fine flour: Thickens the batter so it holds together while cooking.
Apricots: Add fruit pulp that thickens the mixture and gives it flavour.
Milk or cream: Forms the liquid base that the eggs and flour set within.

Swap the apricot

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, flour, cinnamon, sugar, butter. 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.