Name: Cottolene Cookies
Ingredients: ⅔ cup Cottolene; 2 cups sugar; 2 eggs, well beaten; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 cup buttermilk; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1½ tablespoons caraway seeds; Flour (as needed); Raisins (to taste)

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 ↓

Cottolene Cookies

Oven, in the book's wordsThe hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the Cottolene in a mixing bowl.
Gradually add the sugar and mix well.
Add the well beaten eggs and mix until combined.
Dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk and add to the mixture.
Stir in the salt, caraway seeds, and enough flour to make a soft dough.
Chill the dough for a while.
Shape the chilled dough into cookies and place on a baking sheet.

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).
Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Caraway + raisintop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,973 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the caraway

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Jalapenofits better
Carawaythe original

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