Name: Christmas Pudding À LA Blomfield
Ingredients: 4 large juicy baking apples; 4 pears; 1 foreign or tinned pineapple; 1 lemon; 1 orange; 4 ounces sweet almonds, ground finely

Why it works: Apple and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 649 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Christmas Pudding À LA Blomfield

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the apples, pears, pineapple, lemon, and orange into small pieces.
Add the ground almonds to the chopped fruit.
Mix well to combine all 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.

Apple + peartop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together649 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).
Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Pear + pineappletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together169 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Apple + pineappletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together530 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Pineapple + orangetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,664 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, pear, pineapple, lemon, orange):

Chestnutfits about as well
Almondthe original
Pistachiofits about as well
Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, pear, pineapple, lemon, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.