Name: Cake
Ingredients: ½ cup cracked wheat; 1 cup water; 12 blanched almonds, chopped; 1 tablespoon pine nuts, chopped; 1 tablespoon pecans, finely ground; 2 tablespoons seeded raisins, cut with scissors; 1 egg, beaten; coconut milk

Why it works: Almond and pine match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 176 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the cracked wheat in water for six hours.
Mash the soaked wheat as fine as possible.
Add chopped almonds, pine nuts, pecans, and raisins to the mashed wheat and mix thoroughly.
Spread the mixture on a dish to a thickness of ½ inch.
Cover with the beaten egg and pour coconut milk over it.

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 + pinetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together176 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,093 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).
Pecans + coconuttop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together394 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together394 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, almond, pine, nuts, pecans, egg, coconut):

Vanillafits better
Avocadofits better
Figfits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, almond, pine, nuts, pecans, egg, coconut. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.