Name: Coffee Cake
Ingredients: less flour than white bread; a few well beaten eggs; grated rind of several lemons and oranges; nutmeg (optional); dried fruit (optional); vanilla (optional); mace (optional); bitter almonds (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Coffee Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough like white bread, using less flour.
Add the beaten eggs and grated rinds of lemons and oranges.
Flavor with nutmeg, dried fruit, vanilla, mace, or bitter almonds if desired.
Serve with fresh sweet milk or scalded milk for supper.

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,371 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,746 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, bread, egg, lemon, orange, vanilla, mace):

Nutmegthe original
Cinnamonfits about as well
Cardamomfits less well
Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread, egg, lemon, orange, vanilla, mace. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.