Name: Baba a LA Parisienne
Ingredients: ½ cup butter; 4 tablespoons sugar; grated peel of 1 lemon; 7 eggs; 2 cups sifted flour; 2 tablespoons flour (for each egg); 1 small cup lukewarm milk; handful of almonds

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baba a LA Parisienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the yeast as directed.
Cream the butter with the sugar and lemon peel.
Add the eggs one at a time, stirring for a few minutes before adding the next.
Add the flour, two tablespoons at a time, until all is used.
Make a soft dough with the yeast, lukewarm milk, and a cup of flour.
Let it rise for 15 minutes.
Mix everything well.
Grease a baking form with butter.
Blanch the almonds, cut them into long strips, and strew them in the form.
Fill the form with the batter, let it rise for 2 hours, and bake slowly.

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 + 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).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

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