Name: Marrow Pudding
Ingredients: 1 penny loaf, grated; 1½ cups cream; 6 eggs; ½ pound marrow, cut into pieces (or minced beef suet); ½ cup currants, stoned and cleaned; ½ cup raisins, stoned and cleaned; cinnamon, to taste; nutmeg, to taste; sugar, to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Marrow Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the cream and pour it hot over the grated bread.
Beat the eggs in a bowl.
Mix the marrow, currants, raisins, and beaten eggs with the bread mixture.
Sweeten and season with cinnamon and nutmeg.
If using, substitute minced beef suet for marrow.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, beef, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Lemonfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, beef, raisin, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.