Name: A Christmas Pudding
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; 1 pound granulated sugar; 1 pound currants; 1 pound raisins; 1 pound beef suet; Juice of 2 oranges; Juice of 1 lemon; 6 eggs

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Christmas Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Seed the raisins, wash and pick the currants, then dry them and flour both well.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and suet.
Add the juice of the oranges and lemon, along with the grated rind of 1 orange.
Beat the eggs until very light, then gradually stir them into the mixture.
Flour the pudding bag, then pour in the pudding mixture.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,684 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 (flour, sugar, raisin, beef, orange, lemon, egg):

Figfits better
Vanillafits better
Cranberryfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, raisin, beef, orange, lemon, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.