Name: Chocolate Cake
Ingredients: ½ lb butter; 6 oz sugar; 10 oz flour; 2 oz grated chocolate; 3 eggs; ½ lb Sultana raisins; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

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 ↓

Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.
Add the beaten eggs and melted chocolate (melted in a little milk).
Mix in the flour, baking powder, raisins, and vanilla extract.
Pour the mixture into a buttered and floured cake tin.

Bake

Bake for about one hour.

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).
Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,020 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together782 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Eggs: Provide structure as they set, and help bind the batter.
Flour: Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar: Sweetens the cake and helps create a creamy, aerated batter when beaten with butter.

Swap the raisin

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

Coconutfits about as well
Figfits about as well
Raisinthe original
Blueberryfits about as well

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.