Name: Fudge Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; ⅔ cup butter; 3 eggs; 1 cup milk; 2½ cups flour; 1 heaping teaspoon baking powder; ¼ cup chocolate; ½ cup English walnuts (broken coarsely)

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fudge Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the milk and mix well.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.
Stir in the nuts.
Dissolve the chocolate in a cup placed in hot water, then add to the batter.
Beat the eggs separately and fold them into the mixture.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,548 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 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

Swap the walnut

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

Almondfits better
Hazelnutfits about as well
Pecansfits about as well
Walnutthe original

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