Name: Golden Cake
Ingredients: 1 pint powdered sugar; ½ cup sweet milk; 1 teaspoon vanilla extract; 1½ pints all-purpose flour; ½ teaspoon baking powder; ½ pint stoned raisins; 6 ounces butter

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Golden Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the butter and powdered sugar together until very light.
Add the sweet milk, well-beaten egg yolks, vanilla extract, and sifted flour with baking powder.
Rub 1 teaspoon of flour into the raisins and stir them into the batter.
Pour the batter into a small dripping pan and bake until golden brown.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Vanilla + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together782 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, vanilla, flour, butter):

Figfits about as well
Raisinthe original
Peachfits about as well
Coconutfits about as well

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