Name: Cheese Curd Pudding a LA Richmond
Ingredients: 3 pints milk; 6 ounces currants, well washed and picked; sugar to taste; a little lemon zest; 4 egg yolks; ½ pint cream; ⅓ cup brandy; puff pastry for lining

Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cheese Curd Pudding a LA Richmond

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the dry curd from the milk with the currants, sugar, and lemon zest.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks into the scalded cream and add the brandy.
Combine the mixtures and pour into a tourte tin lined with puff pastry.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and serve dusted with sugar.

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.

Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,738 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,635 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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 (milk, currant, sugar, egg, cream, brandy):

Vanillafits better
Raspberryfits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, currant, sugar, egg, cream, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.