Why it works: Plum and lemon work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 623 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓
Currant Dumplings
Ingredients
Directions
Divide the mixture into pieces the size of an egg.
Drop them into fast-boiling water without laying them in a cloth.
Boil quickly for about 30 minutes, moving them around to prevent sticking.
Sift sugar over the dumplings and serve with lemon juice.
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.
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Plum + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together623 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,313 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the plum
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):
- Orangefits better
- Limefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Plumthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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