Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Date Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Combine the oatmeal, flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.
Add the butter (or butter and lard) to the dry ingredients.
Stir in the milk; you may need a little sour milk.
In a separate pot, boil the dates with sugar and enough water until soft.
Mix the boiled dates into the batter until well combined.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + datestop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together470 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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 dates
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, milk, butter):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Datesthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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