Name: Muffin Pudding
Ingredients: stale muffins; wine; apricot preserve; custard; arrowroot sauce

Why it works: Apricot and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Muffin Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the stale muffins into slices and soak them in wine.
Layer the soaked muffins alternately with apricot preserve and custard until the dish is filled.
Steam the layered pudding until cooked through.
Turn it out onto a serving dish and serve with wine and arrowroot sauce.

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.

Apricot + arrowroottop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together30 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Wine + apricottop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together247 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Wine + arrowroottop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together153 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Arrowroot + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together133 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Apricot + saucetop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together152 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).