Name: Railroad Cake
Ingredients: Washington cake batter; 2 cups currants or stoned raisins; 2 teaspoons molasses; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; ½ teaspoon cloves; ½ teaspoon allspice; jelly or icing for layering

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Railroad Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

Divide the Washington cake batter into two parts.
To one half, add the currants or stoned raisins, molasses, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

Bake and assemble

Bake the batter in jelly pans.
Layer the dark and light cake with jelly or icing in between.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,359 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,928 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants or stoned raisins: Add fruit, chewiness and sweetness to the dark portion of the cake.
Molasses: Adds dark colour, moisture and a deep, slightly bitter sweetness to the dark layer.
Cinnamon: Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour to the dark layer.
Jelly or icing: Adds moisture and sweetness between the layers and helps hold them together.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, cinnamon, clove, allspice):

Orangefits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, cinnamon, clove, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.