Name: Ratafia Pudding
Ingredients: 2 sponge cakes; preserves; 241 g flour; white wine sauce

Why it works: Flour and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,078 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Ratafia Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

2 sponge cakes
preserves
241 g flour
white wine sauce

Directions

Assemble

Soak the sponge cakes as for trifle.
Layer the soaked sponge cakes and preserves in a mold until full.

Bake and serve

Add the flour after mixing the other ingredients.
Bake for 1.5 hours.
Turn out and serve with white wine sauce.

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 + saucetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,078 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
White wine + saucetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together819 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + white winetop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,082 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sponge cakes: Soak up liquid and soften, forming the body of the pudding.
Preserves: Add fruit sweetness and moisture that soaks into the cake layers.
Flour: Adds structure as it sets during baking.

“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.