Name: Border of Genoise Cake
Ingredients: apricot jam; ½ cup calf’s foot jelly; 1 pint boiling water; 2 ounces pistachio nuts; 1 pound loaf sugar

Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Border of Genoise 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).
Fill each mold with the cake batter and place them on a baking sheet lined with paper.
Bake until the cakes feel firm to the touch or a skewer comes out dry.
Ensure the cakes are a light brown color.
Gently tap the edge of each mold to release the cakes and turn them out onto a wire rack.
Rub the apricot jam through a sieve into a small saucepan.
Add the calf’s foot jelly to the jam and boil for 3 minutes, then set aside.
Boil the pistachio nuts in 1 pint of water for 3 minutes, then strain and remove the skins.
Cut each pistachio in half and then into shreds.
Break up the loaf sugar with a rolling pin into grains the size of currants, sift, and select the desired size.

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.

Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Apricot + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together188 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apricot + nutstop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Pistachio + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,233 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).