Name: Lemon Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pudding basin; light bread; very finely-shredded beef suet; grated lemon peel; 2 eggs; ½ pint milk; 1 tablespoon flour; cold water

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Lemon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the basin

Butter the pudding basin.

Layer and custard

Layer light bread in the basin.
Spread a little beef suet and grated lemon peel over the bread.
Repeat the layering until the basin is lightly filled.
Make a custard by whisking together the eggs and milk.
Pour the custard over the bread gradually.

Cook and make the sauce

Cover the pudding with a paper cap.
Boil gently for 1 hour.
For the sauce, mix flour with cold water and stir it into the remaining milk.

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.

Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,032 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Light bread: Forms the body of the pudding and soaks up the custard as it cooks.
Eggs: Set the custard, binding the bread into a soft, sliceable pudding.
Milk: Moistens the bread and forms the custard, with the remainder thickening the sauce.
Beef suet: Adds richness and fat, giving the pudding a tender, moist texture.
Flour: Thickens the remaining milk into the sauce.