Name: Pancake Pudding
Ingredients: 5 or 6 thin cold pancakes; 3 stale sponge cakes; some jam; 2 cups milk; 2 eggs; 2 oz. Allinson fine wheatmeal; vanilla flavoring to taste

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Pancake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the layers

Spread jam on the pancakes, roll them up, and cut into slices.
Butter a mold and arrange the slices in a circle around the bottom, overlapping them.
Fill the center with broken pieces of sponge cake.

Make and steam

In a bowl, mix the wheatmeal, milk, eggs, and vanilla to make a batter.
Pour the batter over the pancake and sponge cake layers.
Steam the pudding for 1.5 hours, then turn out 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.

Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together27,347 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Egg and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 27,347 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: Bind the batter and help the pudding set as it steams.
Allinson fine wheatmeal: Adds body to the batter so it holds together around the cake and pancakes.
Milk: Moistens the batter and helps the pudding stay tender while steaming.
Stale sponge cakes: Soak up the batter and give the pudding a soft, cake-like interior.

“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.