Name: Christmas Plum-pudding
Ingredients: 1¼ pounds currants; 1¼ pounds Muscatel raisins; sweet beef suet

Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Christmas Plum-pudding

Ingredients

1¼ pounds currants
1¼ pounds Muscatel raisins
sweet beef suet

Directions

Carefully look over the currants and place them in a colander.
Cover the currants with a plate and submerge the colander in hot water.
Wash the currants with your hands, repeating if necessary.
Drain the currants on a clean cloth for 15 minutes to allow them to swell.
Pick out any stones from the currants, placing them in a separate dish.
Wash the raisins, removing the stalks and stones, and check each one for stones.

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.

Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Raisin + beeftop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,273 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Currant + beeftop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,464 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).