Name: Cossack Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; ¾ pound stoned raisins; ¾ pound fat salt pork, well washed and chopped; 2 tablespoons sugar or treacle; ½ pint water

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cossack Plum Pudding

Ingredients

1 pound flour
¾ pound stoned raisins
¾ pound fat salt pork, well washed and chopped
2 tablespoons sugar or treacle
½ pint water

Directions

Make the pudding

Mix the flour, raisins, chopped pork, sugar or treacle, and water together.
Place the mixture into a cloth and tie it tightly.

Cook and serve

Boil the pudding for 4 hours, or 2 hours if short on time.
Serve hot.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + porktop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together11,187 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + porktop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together193 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and pork barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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

Flour: Forms the body of the pudding and sets as it cooks, holding the raisins and pork together.
Fat salt pork: Adds richness and moisture, melting slightly into the pudding as it boils.
Stoned raisins: Provide sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Sugar or treacle: Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour.

The step that matters

Tying the cloth tightly. A snug cloth keeps the pudding compact and stops water from seeping in during the long boil, so the texture stays dense rather than soggy and loose.

“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.

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Cossack Plum Pudding