Name: Almond Ring Cakes
Ingredients: 4 oz Flour; 1/4 Egg; 2 oz Butter; 1 oz Castor Sugar; 1 teaspoon Baking Powder; Almond Mixture (see below); 1/2 teaspoon Red Currant Jelly; Chopped Pistachio Nuts

Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Almond Ring Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Cream the butter and sugar together until white.
Add the quarter of an egg, then gradually mix in the flour and baking powder until smooth.
Roll out the dough and cut into rounds with a fluted cutter.
Using a piping bag, press some almond mixture around each biscuit.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 15 minutes.
Once cool, place 1/2 teaspoon of red currant jelly in the center of each cake and sprinkle with chopped pistachio nuts.

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.

Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together693 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together394 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Flour + pistachiotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together505 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, butter, sugar, almond, pistachio, nuts):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Red currantthe original

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