Name: Chocolate Cake
Ingredients: 8 egg yolks; ½ pound sugar; ½ pound blanched almonds, finely chopped; ½ pound grated sweet chocolate; ½ pound raisins, seeded and chopped; 1 cup matzo flour, sifted; juice of 1 orange; ⅓ cup wine

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the egg yolks and sugar until light.
Add the chopped almonds, grated chocolate, chopped raisins, and sifted matzo flour.
Mix in the orange juice and wine.
Combine all ingredients until well blended.

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,125 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Almond + chocolatetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,733 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, almond, chocolate, raisin, flour, wine):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Cherryfits about as well
Orangethe original

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