Name: Butter Cakes
Ingredients: 1 cup butter; 2 pounds sifted sugar; 3 pounds dried flour; 12 eggs, separated; 1 ounce mace; 1 nutmeg, grated; 2 tablespoons brandy; optional: seeds and currants

Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Butter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter in a large bowl.
Add the sifted sugar and dried flour, mixing well.
Incorporate the egg yolks and half of the egg whites, then beat the mixture for one hour.
Before baking, fold in the mace, grated nutmeg, brandy, and any optional seeds or currants.

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.

Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,791 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, egg, mace, nutmeg, brandy):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

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