Name: Marmalade Pudding
Ingredients: 4 tablespoons marmalade; 3 cups bread crumbs; ½ cup milk and water mixed; 1 cup suet; 1 cup flour; 1 tablespoon baking powder; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Marmalade Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

In a large bowl, combine the marmalade, bread crumbs, milk and water mixture, suet, flour, baking powder, and salt, and mix well until all ingredients are combined.
Transfer the mixture to a greased pudding mold.

Steam and serve

Steam the pudding for about 1 hour.
Serve warm with your choice of 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 + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,383 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Bread crumbs: Provide bulk and a soft, tender crumb structure to the pudding.
Suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it steams.
Flour: Gives the pudding structure so it holds its shape when cooked.
Baking powder: Releases gas during cooking so the pudding rises and becomes light.
Marmalade: Adds sweetness, citrus acidity and flavour throughout the pudding.

“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.