Name: Frozen Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups raisins, chopped fine; 1 pint cream; 2 cups chopped pecans; 1 quart pure cream; 2 egg whites; 1 cup cherries (optional); 1 cup crystallized ginger (optional); 1 cup orange peel (optional)

Why it works: Ginger and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Frozen Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the chopped raisins in 1 pint of cream overnight.
Make an old-fashioned custard and add the chopped pecans and soaked raisins.
Beat 1 quart of pure cream until stiff, then fold in the beaten egg whites.
Pour the custard into a freezer and partly freeze it.
Add the whipped cream to the partially frozen custard.
If desired, mix in cherries, crystallized ginger, and orange peel.
Freeze and pack the pudding some time before serving.

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.

Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,833 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,242 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,684 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + pecanstop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together139 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pecans + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,280 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, cream, pecans, egg, orange):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits about as well
Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, cream, pecans, egg, orange. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.