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 ↓
Chocolate Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the cocoa with 3 cups of milk and let it cool.
Cream the butter and 1 cup of sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs, well beaten, and mix thoroughly.
Sift the flour and baking powder together twice.
Add the milk and flour alternately to the butter mixture.
Finally, add the cooled cocoa mixture and mix well.
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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Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together643 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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 cocoa
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk, butter, egg, flour):
- Almondfits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Milletfits better
- Cocoathe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter, egg, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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