Name: Lamb’s Tail Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pint white sauce; fresh basil; ⅓ cup sherry; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Basil and sherry work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 168 recipes. Both carry damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lamb’s Tail Pudding

Ingredients

1 pint white sauce
fresh basil
⅓ cup sherry
coarse sea salt

Directions

Cut and prepare lamb tails as for oxtail pudding.
Reduce the white sauce and flavor it with fresh basil and sherry.
Season the sauce, then pour it over the prepared lamb tails.
Boil the pudding for 1.5 hours.

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.

Basil + sherrytop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together168 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Sauce + sherrytop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,097 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + basiltop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together701 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).