Name: Cheese Caices
Ingredients: 1½ ounces butter (3 tablespoons); 1½ ounces sugar (⅔ cup); 1 egg; 5 drops almond essence; grated rind of 1 lemon; a sprinkle of nutmeg; 1 ounce cracker crumbs (⅓ cup); 4 tablespoons milk

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cheese Caices

Ingredients

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).
In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.
Add the egg, almond essence, lemon rind, nutmeg, cracker crumbs, and milk. Mix well.
Line patty pans with puff pastry.
Fill the lined pans with the mixture.
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.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 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 lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, almond, nutmeg, milk):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Lemonthe original

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