Name: Pound Cake
Ingredients: 1 pound sifted sugar; 1 pound fresh butter; 9 egg yolks; 5 egg whites; 1 pound sifted flour; caraway seeds (to taste); 4 ounces candied orange peel, sliced; a few currants, cleaned

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pound Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream together the sugar and butter by hand for 10 minutes.
Add the beaten egg yolks and whites, mixing well.
Gently fold in the sifted flour, caraway seeds, candied orange peel, and currants.
Mix all ingredients lightly until combined.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Caraway + orangetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together158 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,034 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Butter and flour 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 (sugar, butter, egg, flour, caraway, orange):

Raisinfits better
Lemonfits better
Vanillafits better
Currantthe original

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