Name: Hickory Nut or Walnut Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups fine white sugar; ½ cup butter; 3 eggs; ⅔ cup sweet milk; 3 cups sifted flour; 1 heaping teaspoon baking powder; 1 tablespoon powdered mace; 1 coffee cup hickory nut or walnut meats, chopped; raisins

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hickory Nut or Walnut 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.

Make the batter

Cream sugar and butter together.
Add eggs and sweet milk, mixing well.
Sift flour with baking powder and add to mixture.
Stir in powdered mace and chopped nuts.

Bake

In prepared cake pans, layer cake batter, raisins, and nuts until pans are two-thirds full.
Line pans with well-buttered paper and bake at 350°F until done.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Eggs: Provide structure and richness, helping the cake set as it bakes.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Flour: Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Walnut meats: Add texture and a nutty flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Line pans with well-buttered paper and bake at 350°F until done.. Batter that is not properly lined can stick to the pans and tear when turned out. Baking until done, rather than by a fixed time, matters because the centre must set fully before the cake is removed from the oven.

Swap the mace

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Capersfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, coffee, raisin. 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.