Name: Pumpkin Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound butter; ½ pound sugar; 1 pound pumpkin, stewed and passed through a colander; 4 eggs; ⅓ cup brandy; ⅓ cup wine; 1 teaspoon rose water; 1 teaspoon spice

Why it works: Brandy and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Pumpkin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
Add the pumpkin, eggs, brandy, wine, rose water, and spice.
Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

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.

Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,427 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Brandy + rosetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together560 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the pumpkin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, brandy, wine, rose):

Vanillafits better
Currantfits better
Raspberryfits better
Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, brandy, wine, rose. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.