Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Canadian Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the Indian meal with a little cold milk.
Infuse the lemon rind in the remaining milk for 15 minutes, then strain the boiling milk over the meal.
Return the mixture to the saucepan, add the sugar, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
When cool, add the well-beaten eggs and pour the mixture into a baking dish.
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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Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,742 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,155 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
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Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, raisin):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
- Datesfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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