Name: Cheese Cakes
Ingredients: 2 quarts milk; 4 ounces butter; ½ cup cream; sugar to taste; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon nutmeg; 4 eggs; ¼ pound currants

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Strain the whey from the curd of the milk.
When the curd is rather dry, break it in a pan with the butter until perfectly smooth.
Add the cream, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, and currants.
Mix well until combined.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, cream, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

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