Name: Modern Cookery
Ingredients: ½ pint good cream; a few tablespoons brandy or ratifia; butter for greasing cups

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

½ pint good cream
a few tablespoons brandy or ratifia
butter for greasing cups

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding

Cool the cream.
Flavor the cream with brandy or ratifia.
Pour the mixture into small, well-buttered cups.

Bake

Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 10 to 12 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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,635 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream: Provides richness and a smooth, custard-like texture as it sets gently in the oven.
Brandy or ratifia: Adds a strong, aromatic flavor to the cream.

“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.