Name: Bride's Cake
Ingredients: one pound flour; one pound sugar; three-quarters pound butter; half pint molasses; one cupful of lard; one teacupful of brown sugar; half tea- spoonful of soda; two tablespoonsful of ginger

Why it works: Tea and ginger work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 216 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Bride's Cake

Ingredients

Directions

One pound flour, one pound sugar, three-quarters pound butter, the whites of eighteen eggs ; flavor with bitter almonds ; beat very light.
GINGERSNAPS.
Half pint molasses, one teacupful of brown sugar, half tea- spoonful of soda, a little salt, two tablespoonsful of ginger, one cupful of lard. Warm the molasses, stir soda in it, then the sugar ; mix all together and roll out thin.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

781Calories

13 gProtein

26 gFat

123 gCarbs

What these numbers assume: 6 portions

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Lard	1 tbsp (12.8g)	115
Butter	1 tbsp (14g)	102
Molasses	1 tbsp (20g)	58
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Ginger	1 tsp grated fresh (2g)	2

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson.". 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. See the original page.

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.

Tea + gingertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together216 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,116 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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 ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, molasses, tea):

Cinnamonfits better
Gingerthe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Clovefits less well

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