Name: A Cheap Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound rice; 4 ounces coarse sugar or treacle

Why it works: Rice and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,324 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

½ pound rice
4 ounces coarse sugar or treacle

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a deep tin or pan, combine the rice and sugar or treacle.

Bake and serve

Bake until cooked through and set.
Serve warm to a sick or young family.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Rice + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together8,324 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice: Forms the body of the pudding and sets into a soft, spoonable texture as it cooks.
Coarse sugar or treacle: Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the pudding brown slightly as it bakes.

“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.