Name: Clove Cake
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 1 cup brown sugar; ½ cup butter; ¾ cup chopped raisins; ¼ cup sweet milk; 1½ cups flour; ½ teaspoon Magic Soda; 1 teaspoon ground cloves

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Clove Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and brown sugar together.
Add the eggs directly into the mixture (do not beat them).
Mix the Magic Soda into the milk, then add part of the flour.
Incorporate the chopped raisins and the remaining flour.

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,070 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 clove

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Capersfits better
Clovethe original

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