Name: Plum Pound Cake
Ingredients: ½ pound currants; 2 ounces orange peel, finely chopped; 2 ounces candied lemon peel, finely chopped; ½ nutmeg, grated

Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Plum Pound Cake

Ingredients

½ pound currants
2 ounces orange peel, finely chopped
2 ounces candied lemon peel, finely chopped
½ nutmeg, grated

Directions

Make a basic pound cake as per your preferred recipe.
After beating the batter, gently mix in the currants, orange peel, candied lemon peel, and grated nutmeg.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,746 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,034 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,983 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).