Name: Another Bean Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound blanched beans; 2 ounces butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 4 egg yolks; crumbs of a new roll soaked in milk

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Another Bean Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Boil the blanched beans until tender.
Pound the beans in a mortar with the soaked roll crumbs.
Add the butter, salt, pepper, and mix well with the beaten egg yolks.

Cook

Boil in a basin or bake in a pudding dish lined with puff pastry.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Beans + milktop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,266 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched beans: Form the bulk of the pudding and give it a soft, tender body.
Egg yolks: Bind the mixture and set it into a custard-like texture when cooked.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, softening the texture of the pudding.
Roll crumbs soaked in milk: Absorb liquid and add body, helping hold the beans together.