Name: Nut Drop Cakes
Ingredients: 1 cup brown sugar; ½ cup butter; 1 cup chopped raisins; 1 cup chopped walnuts; 1½ cups all-purpose flour; 4 teaspoons baking soda; Spices: cassia, nutmeg, and cloves to taste; Warm water (for dissolving baking soda)

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Nut Drop Cakes

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).
Cream the butter and brown sugar together until smooth.
Add the well-beaten eggs and mix well.
In a separate bowl, combine the raisins, walnuts, spices, and flour.
Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of warm water and add it to the mixture.
Combine all ingredients thoroughly.
Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking pan.
Bake until golden brown.

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.

Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together194 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Walnut + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,230 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the cassia

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, raisin, walnut, flour, nutmeg, clove):

Cinnamonfits better
Cardamomfits better
Allspicefits better
Cassiathe original

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