Name: Treacle Cheese-cake
Ingredients: ½ lb. flour; 2 oz. dripping (or butter); a pinch of salt; ½ lb. treacle; 2 oz. bread crumbs; a little grated lemon rind; squeeze of lemon juice

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Treacle Cheese-cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Grease a flat tin or large dinner plate.
Flour the scale tray and weigh the treacle.

Make the filling

Tip the warm treacle into a basin and mix with the bread crumbs, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind.

Assemble and bake

Make a short-crust pastry and roll it out to fit the size of the plate.
Place the pastry in the tin, trim the edges, and pour the mixture into the center.
Decorate the edges and bake for about 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,404 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,445 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the pastry base that holds the filling in its shape.
Dripping or butter: Adds fat that makes the short-crust pastry tender and crumbly.
Treacle: Provides the sweet, dark body and flavour of the filling.
Bread crumbs: Soaks up the treacle and thickens the filling so it holds together.