Name: Bread Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup light bread sponge; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup butter; ½ cup sour milk; 1½ cups flour; 2 eggs; 1½ teaspoons baking soda; 2 cups raisins; spices to taste

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 ↓

Bread Cake

Ingredients

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the bread sponge, sugar, butter, sour milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, raisins, and spices.
Mix until well combined.
Let the mixture rise until it has doubled in size.

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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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 raisin

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

Vanillafits about as well
Raisinthe original
Figfits about as well
Peachfits less well

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