Name: A Good Rice Pudding
Ingredients: 6 ounces rice; ¼ teaspoon salt; ½ cup milk; ¼ pint cream; 2 ounces clarified butter; 4 ounces powdered sugar; grated rind of ½ lemon; 1 tablespoon brandy; 4 eggs

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Good Rice Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the rice in milk with salt for 20 minutes.
Drain the rice and mix it with cream, clarified butter, powdered sugar, lemon rind, brandy, and beaten eggs.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,374 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, milk, cream, butter, sugar, brandy, egg):

Vanillafits better
Coconutfits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, cream, butter, sugar, brandy, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.