Name: Minnehaha Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup butter; 3 cups flour; 2 cups sugar; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 1 cup milk; lemon flavoring; 8 egg whites; 1 cup blanched almonds; 2 cups seeded raisins

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minnehaha Cake

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Add the egg whites and mix well.
Sift the flour and baking powder together, then gradually add to the mixture, alternating with the milk.
Flavor the batter with lemon.
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.
For the filling, chop the blanched almonds and seeded raisins finely.
Mix the chopped almonds and raisins with a boiled frosting and flavor with lemon.
Spread the filling on the cooled cake and decorate the top with halved blanched almonds.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, milk, egg, almond, raisin):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

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