Name: Apricot Pudding a LA Ceres
Ingredients: 24 fine apricots; ¼ pound sugar; pastry cream; sauce

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apricot Pudding a LA Ceres

Ingredients

24 fine apricots
¼ pound sugar
pastry cream
sauce

Directions

Peel, divide, and stone the apricots.
Roll the apricots in sugar.
Place them at the bottom and sides of a mold.
Fill the mold with pastry cream.
Finish as usual and serve with 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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apricot + creamtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,116 recipes

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