Name: Bridget's Cup Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups bread dough; ½ cup butter; 1 cup sugar; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 3 eggs; 1 cup seeded raisins; 1 teaspoon ground cloves; 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon; 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Bridget's Cup Cake

Ingredients

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the bread dough, butter, sugar, and dissolved baking soda.
Add the eggs, raisins, cloves, cinnamon, and vanilla extract. Mix well.
Let the mixture rise until very light 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.

Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Cinnamon + vanillatop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,287 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Clove + vanillatop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,049 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, egg, raisin, cinnamon, vanilla):

Nutmegfits better
Clovethe original
Cardamomfits about as well
Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, sugar, egg, raisin, cinnamon, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.