Name: Sponge Cake
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; 1 cup sugar; 4 large eggs; 1 teaspoon grated nutmeg; 1 teaspoon allspice; 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour; ⅓ cup milk

Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sponge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Butter the cake pans or line them with buttered parchment paper.
In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.
In separate bowls, beat the egg whites and yolks until fluffy.
Strain the yolks and mix them with the butter and sugar mixture.
Add the grated nutmeg and allspice to the mixture.
Gradually stir in the flour and milk 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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,302 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the allspice

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

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits better
Allspicethe original
Clovefits about as well

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