Name: Pistachio Cake
Ingredients: 1 pound cake batter; 1 ounce chopped mixed nuts; Icing of choice; Chopped nuts for decoration; Half walnuts or split almonds for topping

Why it works: Mixed nuts and walnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 36 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pistachio Cake

Ingredients

1 pound cake batter
1 ounce chopped mixed nuts
Icing of choice
Chopped nuts for decoration
Half walnuts or split almonds for topping

Directions

Prepare your cake batter as desired.
Fold in 1 ounce of chopped mixed nuts.
Bake the cake until done.
Ice the cake fully while it's still warm.
Sprinkle chopped nuts on the icing before it dries.
For decoration, use half walnuts or split almonds on top.

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.

Mixed nuts + walnuttop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together36 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Nuts + walnuttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together284 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Mixed nuts + nutstop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).