Name: Watermel Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; ½ cup butter, softened; 3 egg whites; ½ cup sweet milk; 1½ teaspoons baking soda; 2 cups flour; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; red sugar (to color batter); a handful of seeded raisins

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 ↓

Watermel Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk and add to the mixture.
Sift the flour with the cream of tartar and gradually add it to the batter.
Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.
Take out a little more than half of the batter and mix in red sugar to color it.
Stir in the raisins into the colored batter.
Pour the colored batter into the center of a greased round loaf pan and cover with the remaining batter.
Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 raisin

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinthe original
Coconutfits less well
Figfits less well

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