Why it works: Sugar and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,638 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Hydropathic Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
If using fresh fruit, stew it with water and sugar until cooked like in a fruit pie.
If using bottled fruit, boil the syrup with sugar and simmer the fruit in it for a minute or two.
Cut a round piece of stale bread the size of a half-crown and place it at the bottom of a basin.
Arrange strips of stale bread around the round piece, leaving a space the width of a finger between them.
While the fruit is still hot, add it to the basin a spoonful at a time to avoid displacing the bread.
Place the heavier parts of the fruit at the bottom and the juice on top.
Cover the top with stale bread cut into small dice.
Lay a plate on top and add a weight to press it down, preserving the juice that rises above the plate.
Set the pudding in a cool place until needed.
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.
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Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,638 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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