Name: Currant Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound ripe currants; ¼ teaspoon salt; 10 tablespoons sugar; 1 cup flour; 4 eggs; 1 tablespoon baking soda; 1 tablespoon butter

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Currant Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make and cook

Combine currants, salt, sugar, flour, eggs, baking soda, and butter in a bowl and mix until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a greased pudding mold.
Boil the pudding for the recommended time until cooked through.

Serve

Serve with foaming sauce.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,856 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 add structure and richness as they set during cooking.
Flour: Provides the starch and structure that hold the pudding together as it cooks.
Baking soda: Reacts to lighten the batter and help it rise and open up as it cooks.
Butter: Adds fat for moisture and a richer, tender texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the pudding and adds moisture to the batter.
Currants: Provide tart fruit flavour and moist pockets throughout the pudding.