Name: Marshmallow Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups powdered sugar; ⅔ cup butter; 2 rounded teaspoons baking powder; 5 egg whites; 1 cup milk; 2 cups flour; almond extract (to taste); white boiled icing; halves of English walnuts (for topping)

Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Marshmallow Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.
Add the powdered sugar and unbeaten egg whites, and beat for 10 to 15 minutes until light.
Gradually add the milk and flour, mixing well.
Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.
Top with white boiled icing and add halves of English walnuts on top.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together993 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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 walnut

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

Pistachiofits better
Hazelnutfits about as well
Cashew nutfits about as well
Walnutthe original

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