Name: Crack-nuts
Ingredients: 8 ounces flour; 8 ounces sugar; 4 ounces butter; 2 tablespoons raisin wine; 4 eggs; caraway seeds; egg white for washing; sugar for dusting

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Crack-nuts

Ingredients

Directions

Mix flour and sugar in a bowl.
Melt butter and mix with raisin wine.
Beat and strain the eggs, then combine with the flour and sugar mixture to form a paste.
Add caraway seeds and roll out the paste thinly.
Cut into shapes using the top of a glass.
Wash the cut shapes with egg white and dust with sugar.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + carawaytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, raisin, wine, egg):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Carawaythe original
Capersfits about as well

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