Name: Currant Pudding
Ingredients: 1 lb currants (well washed and dried); ½ lb moist sugar; ½ lb flour; ½ lb beef suet; Juice and grated peel of 1 lemon; 2 eggs; ½ cup milk

Why it works: Beef and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,759 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Currant Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and beat

Mix all the ingredients in the order given.
Beat well for ten minutes.

Boil and serve

Boil in a covered basin for three and a half hours.
Serve with 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.

Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Flour: Provides the main structure that holds the pudding together as it cooks.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Beef suet: Adds fat that keeps the pudding rich and moist and gives it a tender crumb.
Moist sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses flavour deepens the pudding.
Currants: Add fruitiness, sweetness and moisture as they plump during cooking.
Milk: Adds liquid that loosens the batter and hydrates the flour.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, beef, lemon, egg, milk):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

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

“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.