Name: Cake
Ingredients: 1 piece of butter (the size of an egg); 1 cup granulated sugar; 1 cup brown sugar; 1 cup wheat flour; 1 cup corn meal; 3 ordinary sized eggs; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Why it works: Wheat and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and granulated sugar together.
Beat the whites and yolks of the eggs separately.
Mix the yolks with the creamed butter and sugar.
Add the milk and mix well.
Sift the baking powder with the flour and stir in gradually.
Fold in the beaten egg whites.
Add the vanilla extract and mix until combined.

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.

Wheat + corntop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together465 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,943 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Wheat + vanillatop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together496 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 vanilla

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

Vanillathe original
Raisinfits about as well
Coconutfits less well
Figfits less well

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