Name: Pearl Cake
Ingredients: 3 egg whites; ½ cup butter; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup corn starch; ½ cup milk; 1½ cups flour; ½ teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon cream of tartar; lemon flavoring

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 ↓

Pearl Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and corn starch.
Add the milk, baking soda, and flour, mixing well.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the batter.
Add lemon flavoring to taste.
Prepare the yolks in the same manner as the whites.

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).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

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