Name: Kind of Fruit Jam
Ingredients: 1 large lemon or 2 small lemons; ½ pound flour; suet or butter; fine brown sugar; fruit preserve; cloth for wrapping

Why it works: Sugar and fruit preserve share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 37 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Kind of Fruit Jam

Ingredients

Directions

Grate the rind and strain the juice of the lemons.
Mix the flour with suet or butter to form a paste.
Spread the paste with a layer of fruit preserve.
Roll it up carefully and pinch the ends to seal.
Wrap it in a cloth and secure the ends.
Boil the pudding for 1 to 2 hours, depending on size and ingredients.

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.

Sugar + fruit preservetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together37 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + fruit preservetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 (flour, butter, sugar, fruit preserve):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Strawberryfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, fruit preserve. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.