Name: Tipsy Cake
Ingredients: 1 savoy cake; almonds, cut into fillets; equal quantities of wine and brandy; rich thick custard; preserves

Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Take a savoy cake and stick almonds, cut into fillets, into it evenly.
Pour equal amounts of wine and brandy over the cake until it absorbs as much as possible.
Cover the cake with a rich thick custard.
Place preserves at the bottom of the dish.

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.

Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,427 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,969 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Almond + winetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).