Name: Scotland Neck Apple Pudding
Ingredients: 2 cups stewed apples; 6 ounces butter, softened; 12 ounces sugar; juice and grated peel of 1 lemon; ½ nutmeg, grated; 1 teacup sponge cake crumbs; a few bitter almonds, chopped; 6 eggs, beaten

Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Scotland Neck Apple Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
Mix in the stewed apples, lemon juice, lemon peel, grated nutmeg, sponge cake crumbs, and chopped bitter almonds.
Allow the mixture to cool, then fold in the beaten eggs until well combined.

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.

Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, almond, egg):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Applethe original

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