Name: Dumplings
Ingredients: 2 ounces muscatel raisins; 2 ounces citron peel; 2 teaspoons fine sponge cake or bread crumbs; ½ cup milk; 2 teaspoons arrowroot; sugar to taste; 2 eggs; sherry (for soaking oranges); cream (for mixing)

Why it works: Raisin and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dumplings

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the raisins and citron peel in sherry beforehand.
Mix the milk and arrowroot, then bring to a boil.
Stir the hot mixture into the crumbs and sugar, and beat well.
Let it cool, then add the yolks of the eggs and the whites of half the eggs.
Incorporate half of the soaked oranges into the pudding mixture.
Carefully steam the pudding for 1.5 hours.
Turn out the pudding and pour sauce around it.
For a cold pudding, leave it in the mold until cold.

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.

Raisin + arrowroottop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Arrowroot + orangetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,684 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, bread, milk, arrowroot, sugar, egg, sherry):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Lemonfits better
Orangethe original

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