Name: Election Cake, with Yeast
Ingredients: 1 pound sugar; ¾ pound butter; 4 eggs; 1 or 2 cakes of yeast; 2½ pounds flour; 1 pint milk; spices to taste; raisins to taste; 1 teacup molasses

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 ↓

Election Cake, with Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the yeast with the milk and a part of the flour; let it stand overnight.
In the morning, cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the eggs and mix well.
Incorporate the remaining flour, spices, raisins, and the yeast mixture.
Let the dough rise again before baking.

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).
Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, flour, milk, molasses):

Raisinthe original
Vanillafits about as well
Figfits less well
Peachfits less well

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