Name: Vegetable Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound cabbage or greens; 1 pound of any of the following: boiled carrots, turnips, parsnips, beet roots, artichokes, potatoes, leeks, celery, or onions

Why it works: Cabbage and carrot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,505 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Vegetable Pudding

Ingredients

1 pound cabbage or greens
1 pound of any of the following: boiled carrots, turnips, parsnips, beet roots, artichokes, potatoes, leeks, celery, or onions

Directions

Boil 1 pound of cabbage or greens until tender.
Boil 1 pound of your chosen vegetable (carrots, turnips, etc.) until tender.
Chop the boiled vegetables finely and combine them, mixing well.
Shape the mixture into a pudding and steam or bake until set.

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.

Cabbage + carrottop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,505 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage or greens: Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it its body once chopped and set.
Carrots, turnips, parsnips, beet roots, artichokes, potatoes, leeks, celery, or onions: Adds the main flavour and bulk, helping the mixture hold together as it sets.

“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.