Name: Montagu Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound suet, chopped; 4 tablespoons flour; 4 eggs; 4 tablespoons milk; ½ pound stoned raisins; sugar, to taste

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Montagu Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the chopped suet, flour, eggs, and milk to form a batter.
Fold in the stoned raisins and add sugar to taste.

Cook

Pour the mixture into a basin.
Boil the basin for 4 hours.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Suet: Melts during cooking to add richness and a moist, tender crumb.
Flour: Provides structure, setting the batter as the pudding cooks.
Eggs: Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Milk: Loosens the batter and adds moisture for a softer texture.
Stoned raisins: Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruitiness throughout the pudding.