Why it works: Sugar and condensed milk work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Cocoa Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Boil the rice in a pint of milk until tender.
In a bowl, mix the eggs with the custard powder, sugar, and half the butter.
Stir the egg mixture into the cooked rice.
Transfer to a buttered dish and dot with remaining butter.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.
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 + condensed milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together804 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Cocoa + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together548 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the cocoa
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, condensed milk):
- Almondfits better
- Pecansfits better
- Walnutfits better
- Cocoathe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, condensed milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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