Name: Boiled Plum Pudding
Ingredients: 8 Boston crackers; 1 quart milk; ¾ cup molasses; boiled raisins; salt to taste; spice to taste; butter; 1 pint boiling water

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Plum Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the Boston crackers in milk overnight.
Strain the soaked crackers through a fine colander in the morning.
Dissolve the butter in a saucepan.
Add the strained crackers, molasses, boiled raisins, salt, and spice to the butter.
Pour in the boiling water and mix well.
Let the mixture cool, then cut it into slices.
Serve with boiled custard poured 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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Raisin + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,630 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,243 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).