Name: Fruit Cake
Ingredients: ½ cup molasses; raisins; citron; currants

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Fruit Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

½ cup molasses
raisins
citron
currants

Directions

Prepare the raisins by rubbing them in a coarse towel to remove stems and dirt.
Pick over the raisins to remove any defects.
Seed the raisins using scissors or a sharp knife, but do not chop them too fine.
Slice the citron thinly, ensuring the pieces are not too large.
Wash the currants in warm water, rubbing well until the water is clear.
Drain the currants in a sieve, spread them on a cloth, and rub dry.
Pick out any bad currants and dry them in a cool oven or in the sun.

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.

Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + curranttop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,817 recipes