Name: Fig Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound figs; ½ pound suet; ½ pound bread crumbs; ¼ pound sugar; juice and grated rind of 1 lemon; 2 eggs; ¼ teaspoon ginger (optional); a little nutmeg (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fig Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the figs into thin slices and chop them finely.
Chop the suet finely or pass both figs and suet through a mincing machine.
Rub the stale bread through a wire sieve to make fine crumbs.
Mix the dry ingredients well.
Bind the mixture with the two well-beaten eggs.

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.

Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,154 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,324 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Fig + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together510 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Fig + gingertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together208 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, bread, sugar, lemon, egg, nutmeg):

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits better
Allspicefits better
Gingerthe original

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