Name: Pudding with Fruit Jam
Ingredients: ½ pound flour; suet or butter (for paste); fine brown sugar; grated rind of 1 large lemon or 2 small lemons; strained juice of 1 large lemon or 2 small lemons; fruit jam (orange marmalade or mincemeat)

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pudding with Fruit Jam

Ingredients

½ pound flour
suet or butter (for paste)
fine brown sugar
grated rind of 1 large lemon or 2 small lemons
strained juice of 1 large lemon or 2 small lemons
fruit jam (orange marmalade or mincemeat)

Directions

Prepare

Make a paste with flour and suet or butter.
Spread a layer of fruit jam over the paste.
Sprinkle fine brown sugar on top, then add the grated lemon rind and juice.
Roll the paste carefully and pinch the ends to seal.

Cook

Wrap the pudding in a cloth and secure the ends.
Boil the pudding for 1 to 2 hours, depending on size and ingredients.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour: Forms the paste that wraps and holds the filling together.
Suet or butter: Adds fat to the paste, giving it richness and a tender texture.
Fruit jam: Provides the main sweet, fruity filling that cooks into the pudding.
Fine brown sugar: Adds sweetness and a slightly caramelised depth to the filling.
Lemon: Its rind adds aroma and its juice adds acidity that brightens the filling.

The step that matters

Securing the wrapped pudding. If the cloth or the sealed ends are loose, water can enter during boiling and the filling can leak out, leaving the pudding soggy and diluted.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, lemon):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Orangethe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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Pudding with Fruit Jam