Why it works: Rhubarb and gooseberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓
Fruit Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the fruit of your choice until tender.
Mix the boiled fruit with sugar to taste.
Follow the directions from the previous recipe for pudding preparation.
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.
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Rhubarb + gooseberrytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together7 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Gooseberry + appletop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together44 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl isobutyrate (flower).
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Rhubarb + appletop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together162 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,852 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rhubarb, gooseberry, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Quincefits better
- Strawberryfits about as well
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, gooseberry, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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