Name: Coffee Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart bread crumbs; 1 cup brown sugar; 1 cup chopped raisins; 2 eggs; 1 teaspoon baking soda; cinnamon to taste; nutmeg to taste; cloves to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Coffee Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Moisten the bread crumbs with cold coffee.
In a bowl, combine the moistened bread crumbs, brown sugar, chopped raisins, eggs, and baking soda.
Season the mixture with cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

Steam and serve

Steam the mixture for 1 hour.
Serve with hard 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs: Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the coffee and eggs to give it body.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help set it as it steams.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a molasses-like depth of flavour.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic and sugary mixture to help it rise and lighten.
Chopped raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the pudding.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove):

Vanillafits about as well
Raisinthe original
Figfits about as well
Quincefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.