Name: Custard Pudding Tapioca and Sago
Ingredients: 4 eggs; ground cinnamon; grated nutmeg; lemon zest; sugar; optional: currants; optional: spirits; optional: candied oranges; optional: lemon peel

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Custard Pudding Tapioca and Sago

Ingredients

Directions

Minced the ingredients very fine and let them cool.
Beat the eggs in a bowl and add ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg, lemon zest, and sugar.
Mix the cooled ingredients with the egg mixture until well combined.
You can either boil or bake the mixture as you would for bread pudding.
For a richer pudding, use more eggs and less rice, and add currants, spirits, candied oranges, and lemon peel 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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, currant, spirit, orange):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits about as well
Figfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar, currant, spirit, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.