Name: Jelly-cake Fritters
Ingredients: stale sponge or plain cup cake; hot lard for frying; strawberry jam or other jam/jelly; boiling milk; cream for serving

Why it works: Strawberry jam and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 144 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Jelly-cake Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Cut stale cake into rounds using a cake cutter.
Heat lard in a frying pan until hot.
Dip each cake round briefly in boiling milk, then drain excess milk.
Fry the cake rounds in hot lard until golden brown.
Spread each fried round thickly with strawberry jam or other jelly.
Stack the rounds neatly on a hot dish and serve with cream.

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.

Strawberry jam + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together144 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Strawberry jam + creamtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together143 recipes