Name: Carolina Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups sugar; 1 cup butter; 3 cups flour; ½ cup sweet milk; 8 egg whites; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 grated coconut (optional)

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Carolina Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream together the sugar and butter.
Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.
Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them in alternately with the flour.
Mix the cream of tartar into the flour before adding.
For extra flavor, fold in the grated coconut if desired.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,648 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,467 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, milk, egg, cream):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutthe original
Figfits about as well

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