Name: Golden Cakes
Ingredients: ½ pound butter; 6 ounces sugar; 3 egg yolks; 3 ounces chopped orange peel; 1 pound self-raising flour

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Golden Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Beat the butter until creamy.
Add the sugar and egg yolks, and beat well.
Mix in the chopped orange peel and self-raising flour.

Shape and bake

Divide the mixture into buns.
Place the buns in a well-greased bag and cook for 20 minutes.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Creamed with sugar, it traps air and fat that give the cakes a tender crumb.
Sugar: Sweetens the cakes and helps the creamed butter hold air during beating.
Egg yolks: Add richness and fat, and help bind the batter together.
Self-raising flour: Provides the starch and gluten structure that sets the cakes as they bake.
Chopped orange peel: Adds aromatic citrus oils that give the cakes their flavour.