Name: Plum Pudding
Ingredients: ½ cup sugar; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon butter; 3 pints sweet milk; ¼ teaspoon salt; 6 crackers, rolled fine; 1 cup raisins; ½ sheet gelatin, dissolved in a little water; nutmeg or cinnamon to taste

Why it works: Raisin and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,377 recipes. Both carry alpha-terpineol, which smells lilac, floral. The science ↓

Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Beat together the sugar, eggs, and butter.
Add the sweet milk, salt, rolled crackers, raisins, and dissolved gelatin.
Season with nutmeg or cinnamon.
Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake.

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.

Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,778 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the nutmeg

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegthe original
Gingerfits less well
Clovefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, milk, raisin, gelatin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.