Name: Bride's Wedding Cake
Ingredients: four pounds of flour; three pounds of butter; three pounds of sugar; four pounds of currants; two pounds of raisins; one ounce of mace; a pint of brandy; a pound of citron improves; four eggs; three nutmegs

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 ↓

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).
Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,791 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour through the batter.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust during the long bake.
Eggs: Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cake its structure.
Currants: Add sweetness and moisture, and fruit pieces that stay plump in the dense batter.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the dense fruit cake.

The step that matters

Leaving the cake in the shut oven after baking. A long-baked, dense fruit cake sets gradually. Cooling slowly in a closed oven reduces sudden temperature change, which helps prevent cracking and sinking in the centre.

Swap the mace

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, currant, raisin, brandy, egg. 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.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Flour	1 cup (125g) all-purpose	455
Butter	1 tbsp (14g)	102
Egg	1 large egg (50g)	78
Grape	1/2 cup (76g)	62
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Nutmeg	1 tsp ground (2.2g)	12
Mace	not in our table	0
Brandy	not in our table	0

Bride's Wedding Cake