Name: Frozen Diplomatic Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup rich custard, flavored with vanilla; 2 cups rich cream; 1 cup good candied green gages and cherries, chopped; 2 dozen lady fingers

Why it works: Vanilla and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,301 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Frozen Diplomatic Pudding

Ingredients

1 cup rich custard, flavored with vanilla
2 cups rich cream
1 cup good candied green gages and cherries, chopped
2 dozen lady fingers

Directions

Prepare the custard

Freeze the custard, fold in the whipped cream, and freeze again.

Layer and freeze

Prepare a square brick mold in pounded ice and salt.
Layer the ice cream in the mold, followed by a layer of ladyfingers and some chopped candied fruit.
Repeat the layering until the mold is full, finishing with a layer of cream.
Cover with waxed paper and place the lid on the mold.
Pack in pounded ice and salt and let it sit for 3.5 hours.
Serve as directed for Nesselrode pudding.

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.

Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,301 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Vanilla and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Rich custard: Forms the frozen base, giving a smooth, creamy body to the layers.
Rich cream: Whipped and folded in, it adds airiness and richness to the frozen texture.
Candied green gages and cherries: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy bits of fruit between the layers.
Lady fingers: Soak up moisture and add a soft, cake-like structure between the frozen layers.

“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.