Name: Currant Pudding
Ingredients: ¼ pound raspberries; ¼ pound red currants; ¼ pound sugar

Why it works: Red currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Currant Pudding

Ingredients

¼ pound raspberries
¼ pound red currants
¼ pound sugar

Directions

Combine raspberries and red currants in a saucepan over medium heat with sugar.
Cook for 5 minutes until heated through.
Pour the mixture into the bottom of a prepared dish.

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.

Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raspberries: Provide the main fruit flavor and soften into a loose, juicy base as they cook.
Red currants: Add tart acidity that balances the sweetness and gives the pudding a sharp, bright flavor.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juice, contributing to a syrupy texture.

“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.