Why it works: Currant and plum work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓
Dumplings and Puddings
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the pudding for one hour.
Remove it from the saucepan and untie the cloth.
Turn it out onto a dish or leave it in the basin.
Serve with sugar sprinkled on top.
For a variation, roll out a thin cover of paste and place it over the pudding.
Use less sugar and reduce boiling time for sweeter fruits.
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 + plumtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together255 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
-
Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,313 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
-
Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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 currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, plum):
- Vanillafits better
- Pearfits better
- Apricotfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, plum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
More fruit dumplings recipes
You might also like
Red Currant Jelly65 recipes
Currant Ice Cream32 recipes
Currant Sherbet9 recipes
Currant and Raspberry Ice7 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.