Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Ginger Plum Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the shredded suet with the bread crumbs.
Add the raisins, ground ginger, and coarse sea salt.
Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and mix it with the other ingredients.
Add the Lyle's Golden Syrup last and beat the mixture well.
Pour the mixture into a buttered basin covered with greased paper.
Boil the pudding fairly fast for two hours.
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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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,242 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,155 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
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Ginger + syruptop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together950 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the ginger
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, raisin, milk, egg, syrup):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Gingerthe original
- Clovefits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against bread, raisin, milk, egg, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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