Name: Plum Pound Cake
Ingredients: 1 pound dried currants; 1 pound sifted flour; 1 pound sifted loaf sugar; 1 pound fresh butter; 12 eggs; 1 glass rose water; 1 powdered nutmeg

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Pound 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).
Whisk the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.
Beat the butter to a cream in a separate bowl.
Gradually add the frothy eggs to the butter, mixing continuously.
Combine the flour and sugar, then add them gradually to the mixture.
Finally, mix in the currants, rose water, and nutmeg.
Beat the mixture for one hour.
Pour into a buttered tin and bake.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together494 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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 currant

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Lemonfits better
Currantthe original

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