Name: Bread Cake
Ingredients: 1 pint of bread dough; 1 cup of butter; 2 cups of sugar; 5 eggs; 1 cup of sour cream; 1 teaspoon of baking soda; spices (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg) to taste

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Combine the butter and bread dough in a bowl and mix well.
In a separate bowl, beat the sugar and eggs until light and fluffy.
Add the egg mixture to the dough, followed by the sour cream and baking soda.
Stir in the spices to taste.
Pour the mixture into a pan and let it rise until light.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 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 clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, sugar, egg, cream, cinnamon, nutmeg):

Allspicefits about as well
Clovethe original
Cardamomfits about as well
Gingerfits less well

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