Name: Bread Cake
Ingredients: 1 pint of dough; ¾ cup of butter; 1 heaping cup of sugar; 1 cup of chopped raisins (dredged with flour); 1 teaspoon of cinnamon; 1 teaspoon of allspice; 1 teaspoon of cloves; 1 teaspoon of baking soda (dissolved in warm water)

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Bread Cake

Ingredients

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the dough, butter, sugar, raisins, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and dissolved baking soda.
Mix thoroughly with your hands.
Let the mixture rise.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 (butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, allspice, clove):

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

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