Name: Banberry Tarts
Ingredients: one pint flour; one cup of sugar; two teaspoons of flour; five o'clock tea saucer; one egg; one lemon

Why it works: Tea and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 610 recipes mention both. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

One pint flour and sufficient lard to make a rich pie crust. Roll thin and cut out with a five o'clock tea saucer, and put in a good teaspoon of the following filling in each. Pinch up the ends good. . .
FILLING. One egg, juice of one lemon, cup of raisins chopped fine, one cup of sugar, salt, two teaspoons of flour.
Leila Nickerson.

By Friday club, Yarmouth, Mass. [from old catalog]. 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Tea + lemontop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together610 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + eggtop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together104,138 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together43,327 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Sugar + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together53,530 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour + sugartop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together89,462 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and egg share little aroma chemistry, yet 104,138 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

Vanillabetter flavor fit
Raisinabout as good a flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, tea, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).