Name: Huckleberry Cake
Ingredients: remnants of mutton; hot water; rice; eggs; butter

Why it works: Rice and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,645 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Huckleberry Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the remnants of mutton finely.
Add a small amount of hot water.
Measure nearly the same quantity of rice as mutton, using one egg for each cup of minced mutton.
Mix all ingredients together and heat until the eggs are cooked.
Stir in a piece of butter suitable for the quantity.
Serve quickly.

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.

Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,781 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + ricetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,019 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Mutton + eggtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,648 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).