Name: Marrow Pudding
Ingredients: 1 quart boiling milk; 1 large breakfast cup stale bread crumbs; ½ lb fresh marrow; 2 oz raisins; 2 oz currants; sugar to taste; 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon; a pinch of nutmeg; puff pastry for the edge of the dish

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

Prepare the filling

Pour boiling milk over stale bread crumbs in a bowl and cover with a plate.
Shred fresh marrow and mix with raisins, currants, and soaked bread.
Sweeten to taste, then add cinnamon and nutmeg.

Bake

Lay puff pastry around the edge of a shallow pudding dish and pour the mixture in.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

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).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

What each ingredient does

Bone marrow: Provides richness and fat that gives the pudding a soft, moist texture.
Stale bread crumbs: Soak up the hot milk and help bind the filling into a soft, custard-like body.
Milk: Moistens the bread and forms the liquid base that sets softly as it bakes.
Raisins: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.
Currants: Add tart, chewy bursts of fruit that contrast with the rich filling.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, bread, raisin, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Applefits better
Currantthe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.