Name: Madeira Pudding
Ingredients: rich shortcrust pastry; greengage jam; damson or raspberry jam; apricot jam; white sugar

Why it works: Raspberry and apricot work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 257 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Madeira Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

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

Butter a pudding mold well.
Line the mold with a thin, even layer of pastry.
Add a layer of greengage jam, then a round of pastry.
Next, add a layer of bright-colored jam, followed by more pastry.
Continue layering with pale-colored jam and pastry until the mold is full.
Cover the top with a layer of pastry.
Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for three hours.
Turn out the pudding and sift white sugar over the top.

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.

Raspberry + apricottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together257 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,101 recipes

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