Name: Curd Cheesecake
Ingredients: curd; 2 tablespoons butter; ½ cup sugar; 1 egg; flavoring of choice; ¼ cup currants or chopped almonds; puff pastry

Why it works: Butter and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Curd Cheesecake

Ingredients

Directions

Strain the curd.
Cream the butter and sugar together.
Beat in the egg and mix with the strained curd.
Add your choice of flavoring, currants, or chopped almonds to the mixture.
Roll out the puff pastry thinly and line patty pans with it.
Fill the lined patty pans with the curd mixture.

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.

Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,856 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,734 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).