Name: Fruit Cake
Ingredients: 1 pound butter; 1 pound sugar; 1 pound currants; 1 pound flour; 8 eggs; ¼ ounce candied lemon peel, chopped fine; ¼ ounce candied orange peel, chopped fine; ¼ ounce candied citron peel, chopped fine

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the butter into pieces and let it soften at room temperature, but do not melt it.
Cream the softened butter and then add the sugar, beating until the mixture is white.
Beat the yolks of the eggs and mix them into the sugar and butter mixture.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.
Add the flour and mix until just combined.
Stir in the well-washed and dried currants and the chopped candied peels.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,034 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 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 currant

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

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