Name: Black-cap Pudding
Ingredients: ¼ pound dried currants; 3 eggs; 1 cup milk; 1 cup all-purpose flour; ¼ cup sugar

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Black-cap Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

Butter a pudding mold.
Add the dried currants to the mold.

Make and cook the pudding

In a bowl, mix the eggs, milk, flour, and sugar to create a light batter.
Pour the batter into the mold over the currants.
Boil the pudding for 30 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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the batter and help the pudding set into a firm, sliceable structure.
All-purpose flour: Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pudding its body.
Milk: Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it spreads around the currants.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the pudding brown lightly at the surface.
Dried currants: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the pudding.