Name: Sweet Pudding of Polenta
Ingredients: ½ to 1 ounce butter; 3 to 4 ounces sugar; 1 cup milk; grated rind of 1 lemon; 4 ounces Sultana raisins; 1 ounce finely shredded candied orange rind; 2 tablespoons treacle (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sweet Pudding of Polenta

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Dissolve the sugar in the milk and add it to the melted butter.
Stir in the grated lemon rind, Sultana raisins, and candied orange rind.
For a cheaper version, mix the treacle with the polenta before adding the milk.
Cook until the mixture is thick and firm, about 10-12 minutes.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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).
Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,742 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, lemon, orange):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Blackberryfits better
Raisinthe original

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