Name: Puddings
Ingredients: 5 puddings; 12 lbs potatoes, peeled; 2 winter cabbages; ¼ lb dripping or beef/mutton suet for every lb of flour; flour; pepper; 1 minced onion

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Boil 5 puddings for 2 hours.
Place 12 lbs of peeled potatoes in a net in the caldron.
Add 2 winter cabbages in nets 45 minutes before the pudding is done.
Divide the pork, pudding, and cabbage proportionally.
Remove the fat and serve.
Use the cooking liquid to make soup by adding peas or rice.

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.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,001 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, beef, flour, pepper, onion):

Chivefits better
Okrafits better
Carrotfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, beef, flour, pepper, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.