Name: To Make Nut Caramels
Ingredients: hickory nuts (or any kind of nut meats); sugar; butter

Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

To Make Nut Caramels

Ingredients

hickory nuts (or any kind of nut meats)
sugar
butter

Directions

Prepare a buttered plate.
In a saucepan, combine sugar and butter over medium heat.
Cook until the mixture reaches a caramel consistency.
Just before removing from heat, stir in the nut meats.
Pour the mixture onto the buttered plate.
Allow to cool, then cut into small pieces or sticks.

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.

Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Nuts + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,291 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,228 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).