Name: Hartford Election Cake
Ingredients: 5 pounds sifted flour; 2 pounds butter; 2 pounds sugar; 1 ½ cups yeast; 4 eggs; ½ ounce nutmeg; 2 pounds raisins; 1 pound citron; 1 quart milk

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hartford Election Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the butter and flour together until very fine.
Add half the sugar, then the yeast, and half the warmed milk.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and add them to the mixture.
Add the remaining milk and beat everything together.
Let the mixture stand overnight.
Beat well again, then add the rest of the sugar, nutmeg, raisins, and citron.
Let the dough rise for three to four hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 nutmeg

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegthe original
Capersfits less well
Jalapenofits less well

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