Name: Rice and Apple Pudding
Ingredients: 2 pounds apples; 2 ounces butter; 1 cup milk; lemon peel; 3 whole eggs or 5 egg yolks; sugar to taste; 1/3 cup wine; powdered clove or cinnamon to taste; minced citron, orange peel, almonds, or currants (optional)

Why it works: Apple and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,774 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Rice and Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Pulp the apples and dry them over the fire to give a grilled taste.
Prepare the butter with milk, lemon peel, and salt.
Add the eggs, sweeten, and mix in the wine and spices.
Line a mold with the mixture and bake until set.
Serve with sugar sprinkled on top and a wine sauce on the side.

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.

Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,207 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,104 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, butter, milk, lemon, egg, sugar, wine):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Tarragonfits about as well
Clovethe original

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