Name: Madeira Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound cheap suet; ¾ pound bread crumbs; 6 ounces moist sugar; ¼ pound flour; 2 eggs; ⅔ cup sherry

Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Madeira Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Mix the suet, bread crumbs, sugar, and flour together in a bowl.
Add the eggs and sherry to the mixture to create a thick batter.

Boil and serve

Pour the batter into a suitable mold and boil for 3½ hours.
Serve with wine sauce.

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.

Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together682 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sherrytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,643 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

What each ingredient does

Suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Bread crumbs: Provide the bulk and body that hold the batter together.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set firm as it cooks.
Flour: Adds structure and helps thicken the batter.
Moist sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses flavor deepens the pudding.
Sherry: Adds aroma and flavor, and loosens the batter to a workable consistency.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.