Name: Meat Puddings
Ingredients: 8 oz. grated bread; 3 oz. finely chopped suet; 4 oz. pounded loaf sugar; juice and grated peel of 2 lemons; 1 egg, beaten; butter for greasing; wine sauce for serving

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Meat Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the grated bread, chopped suet, pounded sugar, lemon juice, lemon peel, and beaten egg together.
Transfer the mixture into a buttered basin.
Boil for 1 hour or shape into dumplings and boil for 20 minutes.
Serve with wine sauce.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, egg, butter, wine, sauce):

Vanillafits about as well
Figfits about as well
Applefits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, butter, wine, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.