Name: Indian Boiled Pudding
Ingredients: ½ pound dried currants; 2 ounces butter; coarse sea salt to taste; Indian meal (sufficient to form a batter); 2 eggs

Why it works: Currant and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Indian Boiled Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter near the fire without letting it get hot.
Stir enough Indian meal into the milk to form a thick batter, then add the salt and melted butter.
Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs; beat the yolks until thick and light, then add to the batter.
Whisk the egg whites until very stiff, then gently fold them into the mixture.
Wash, pick, and dry the currants, then flour them and stir into the batter last.
Dip a pudding bag in water, wring it out, turn it inside out, flour it well, then turn it back.
Pour the mixture into the bag and tie it closely with a strong string, leaving room for the pudding to swell.
Boil a pot of water, place the pudding in, and keep adding boiling water as it evaporates.
Boil the pudding for three hours.
When done, immerse the bag in cold water for a moment, untie the string, turn back the bag, and place the pudding on a dish.
Serve immediately with any kind of sweet 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.

Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,856 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).