Name: Cakes
Ingredients: flour; currants; sugar; carraway seeds; butter; eggs; lemon peel; wine or cream

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Heat all ingredients for 1-2 hours before mixing.
Thoroughly dry and warm the flour.
Wash and dry the currants, then heat them.
Beat the butter and eggs in a bowl over warm water.
Dust the currants with flour and shake them.
Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until long and strain them.
Pound the sugar to a powder and sift it.
Pare the lemon peel thinly, beat it with a little sugar to a paste, and mix with wine or cream.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,323 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 (flour, sugar, butter, egg, lemon, wine):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, lemon, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.