Name: Almond Cheese Cakes
Ingredients: 3 egg yolks; ¼ pound bitter almonds; ¼ pound sweet almonds; ¼ pound sifted sugar; puff pastry for lining tartlet tins

Why it works: Almond and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,679 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Almond Cheese Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the egg yolks until creamy.
Pound the almonds, but not too finely.
Mix the sugar with the beaten eggs, then add the almonds.
Line tartlet tins with puff pastry.
Fill the tins with the almond mixture.

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.

Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).