Name: Chocolate Jumbles
Ingredients: 1 pound sugar; ½ pound grated chocolate; 4 whole eggs or 8 egg whites, well beaten; 6 ounces flour; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; ½ teaspoon cloves; 1 pint broken nuts (optional)

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 ↓

Chocolate Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Line the pans with buttered white paper.
In a bowl, combine sugar, grated chocolate, beaten eggs, flour, cinnamon, and cloves.
Drop the mixture onto the prepared pans using a teaspoon.
If desired, mix in broken nuts before dropping.

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).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Chocolate + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Chocolate + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,808 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 nuts

The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, chocolate, egg, flour, cinnamon, clove):

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Hazelnutfits better
Nutsthe original

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