Name: Cake, a LA Stanley
Ingredients: 10 egg yolks; 1½ pints heavy cream; 8 ounces sugar; cinnamon, to taste; lemon peel, to taste; a pinch of salt

Why it works: Sugar and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 30,777 recipes mention both. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare a Parisian cake in a fluted mold as directed in recipe No. 1273.
Make a compote of greengages in syrup, keeping them whole and as green as possible.
In a saucepan, mix the egg yolks, heavy cream, sugar, cinnamon, lemon peel, and salt.
Stir the mixture over low heat until it begins to thicken, then strain it through a sieve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Sugar + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together30,777 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cinnamon + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cream + sugartop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together43,437 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Egg + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together43,327 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Sugar + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together53,530 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon share little aroma chemistry, yet 30,777 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

Vanillabetter flavor fit
Raisinbetter flavor fit
Pumpkinabout as good a flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).