Name: Ground Rice-pudding, with Chocolate Sauce
Ingredients: 1 ounce butter; 4 egg yolks; 4 egg whites; ½ pint boiled custard; 1 ounce soaked and mashed chocolate

Why it works: Butter and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,543 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ground Rice-pudding, with Chocolate Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter and let it cool.
Beat the cooled butter with the egg yolks for 30 minutes.
Whip the egg whites to a froth and gently mix them in.
Steam the mixture for 15 minutes.
Prepare the custard and stir in the mashed chocolate.
Pour the chocolate custard into the bottom of a dish and serve.

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.

Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,543 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + chocolatetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,448 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).