Name: Steamed Fruit Pudding
Ingredients: 1 cup seedless raisins; ½ cup finely chopped citron peel; ½ cup ground almonds; 3 eggs, well beaten; 1 tablespoon coconut butter or olive oil; 4 cups fine biscuit crumbs; milk, as needed to make a stiff paste

Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Steamed Fruit Pudding

Ingredients

1 cup seedless raisins
½ cup finely chopped citron peel
½ cup ground almonds
3 eggs, well beaten
1 tablespoon coconut butter or olive oil
4 cups fine biscuit crumbs
milk, as needed to make a stiff paste

Directions

Prepare

In a large bowl, combine the raisins, citron peel, ground almonds, beaten eggs, and coconut butter or olive oil.
Add the biscuit crumbs and mix well.
Gradually add milk until the mixture forms a stiff paste.

Steam and serve

Transfer the mixture to a pudding basin.
Steam for 2 hours.
Serve hot with a suitable 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.

Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together388 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,093 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Raisin + biscuittop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,648 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the mixture together and add structure as they set during steaming.
Biscuit crumbs: Form the bulk of the pudding and absorb the milk to create a stiff paste.
Ground almonds: Add body and a rich, nutty texture to the pudding.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pudding.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, egg, coconut, biscuit, milk):

Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Cherryfits about as well
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, coconut, biscuit, milk. 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.