Why it works: Butter and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
fresh marshmallows, one cup boiling water. Boil sugar and water until it ropes well from spoon; have marshmallows broken in small pieces; add to boiling syrup, keep well under until they melt, then pour into well beaten whites of eggs and beat until smooth and cold. — Mrs. B. 0. Snider.
Marshmallow Cake. — Whites of ten eggs, three cups of sugar, one and one-half cups of butter, one cup of sweet milk, half a cup of water, five cups of flour, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder.
Filling. — Two cups of white sugar, half a cup of cold water ; cook till it begins to drop thick from the spoon; add fifteen cents worth of fresh marshmallows ; mash until dissolved ; pour this into the white of three eggs beaten stiff; then spread on cake.
Devil's Food. — Brown sugar two cups, butter half cup, two eggs, half cup buttermilk, one teaspoon soda, half cake sweet chocolate dissolved in half cup hot water. Beat eggs together in a bowl, add butter not creamed, add milk with soda in it, then flour, chocolate and raisins last. Use caramel filling: — Two cups brown sugar, one tablespoon butter, half cup milk; stir while cooking and put on the cake just before it begins to harden. — Mrs. J. C. Lanham.
Devil's Food. — One cup sugar, half cup butter, three cups flour, three eggs beaten separately, half cup milk. Then take one cup grated chocolate, half cup milk, one cup sugar, yolk of one egg and let come to a boil. Add this to the cake batter, and bake in three layers.
Filling. — Two cups sugar, one tablespoon vinegar, half cup water. Cook till it candies real stiff; add one-quarter pound marshmallows, the whites of three eggs well beaten. — Mrs. Hibernia Neil.
Devil's Food Cake. — Part First. — One cup sugar, one cake grated sweet chocolate, half cup sweet milk, yellows of three
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.
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Butter + milktop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together81,222 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttermilktop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together3,667 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Milk + chocolatetop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together9,121 recipes
Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
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Sugar + chocolatetop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together15,399 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together122,858 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 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
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