Name: Gypsy Pudding
Ingredients: sponge cake (prepared as directed in recipe No. 1135); jelly; custard (prepared as directed in recipe No. 1078); ½ pint of cream; lemon or vanilla extract

Why it works: Cream and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,640 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Gypsy Pudding

Ingredients

sponge cake (prepared as directed in recipe No. 1135)
jelly
custard (prepared as directed in recipe No. 1078)
½ pint of cream
lemon or vanilla extract

Directions

Prepare the cake

Bake the sponge cake in two shallow pans.
Spread jelly on one layer of the cake.
Place the other layer on top of the jelly.

Make the custard

Prepare the custard and let it cool.
Pour the custard into a pan.
Drop the cake into the custard.

Serve

Whip the cream and flavor it with lemon or vanilla.
Serve a portion of the cake with some custard and a spoonful of whipped cream on top.

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.

Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,640 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,640 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

Sponge cake: Forms the soft base that soaks up the custard and holds the layers together.
Jelly: Adds sweetness and fruity moisture between the cake layers.
Custard: Supplies moisture and richness that soak into the sponge cake.
Cream: Adds a light, airy richness when whipped and served on top.

“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.