Name: Plain Cake
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon butter; ½ teaspoon baking powder; 4 cups sugar; 1½ cups flour; 2 tablespoons milk; ⅛ teaspoon nutmeg or 5 drops flavor extract; ½ ounce melted chocolate (optional); 1 tablespoon currants or raisins or chopped citron or chopped nuts (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 ↓

Plain Cake

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter
½ teaspoon baking powder
4 cups sugar
1½ cups flour
2 tablespoons milk
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg or 5 drops flavor extract
½ ounce melted chocolate (optional)
1 tablespoon currants or raisins or chopped citron or chopped nuts (optional)

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).
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the baking powder, flour, milk, nutmeg or flavor extract, and mix well.
If using, add melted chocolate after the egg yolk or mix currants, raisins, citron, or nuts with 1 teaspoon of flour and fold in before adding the egg white.
Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake until golden brown.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,128 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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 currant

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Currantthe original

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