Name: English Cookies
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar; 1 cup Cottolene; 2 eggs, beaten; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 3 cups flour; spices to taste; 1 cup chopped raisins; 1 cup chopped nuts

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 ↓

English Cookies

Ingredients

Directions

Cream together the sugar and Cottolene.
Add the beaten eggs, baking soda, flour, spices, raisins, and nuts.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking pan, spacing them 2 inches apart.
Use all of the flour.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).