Name: Almond Custard Pudding
Ingredients: 1 delicate sponge cake; blanched almonds; ¼ cup wine; rich vanilla custard

Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Custard Pudding

Ingredients

1 delicate sponge cake
blanched almonds
¼ cup wine
rich vanilla custard

Directions

Prepare a delicate sponge cake.
Stick blanched almonds into the sponge cake.
Pour ¼ cup of wine over the cake.
Top with rich vanilla custard.

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.

Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,961 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Wine + vanillatop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together887 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Almond + winetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).