Name: Princess Pudding or Cold Cream
Ingredients: 1 ounce preserved cherries; 1 ounce angelica; 1 ounce preserved ginger; 1 ounce preserved apricot; claret jelly; ½ pint heavy cream; 2 tablespoons castor sugar; gelatin

Why it works: Cream and gelatin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Princess Pudding or Cold Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Set a mold thickly with claret jelly.
Whip the cream until very stiff.
Stir in the chopped fruits, melted gelatin, and castor sugar.
Fill the center of the mold with the whipped cream and fruit mixture.
Turn it out and serve with additional whipped cream if desired.

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.

Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,628 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,778 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ginger + apricottop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together341 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Angelica + gingertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together49 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, apricot, cream, sugar, gelatin):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Peppermintfits about as well
Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, apricot, cream, sugar, gelatin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.