Name: Poplar Pear Biscuit
Ingredients: biscuit mixture; butter (for greasing); flour (for dusting); pear jam or any red or pink jam; transparent icing; angelica (for stalks); dried currants (for decoration)

Why it works: Biscuit and angelica share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Poplar Pear Biscuit

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).
Grease baking plates with butter and dust with flour.
Use a biscuit-forcer to shape the batter into halves of pears on the prepared plates.
Bake until golden brown.
Once baked, stick two halves together with pear jam.
Glaze the biscuits with transparent icing.
Decorate with angelica to imitate stalks and place a dried currant at the thick end to resemble the blossom eye.

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.

Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together69 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together39 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Flour + angelicatop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together104 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 (biscuit, butter, flour, pear, angelica):

Vanillafits better
Apricotfits better
Raisinfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, butter, flour, pear, angelica. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.