Name: Perfection Cake
Ingredients: 12 egg whites; 3 cups powdered sugar or 2 cups granulated sugar; 1 cup soft white butter; ½ teaspoon lemon extract; 1 cup sweet milk; 3½ cups flour; ½ cup corn starch; 3 teaspoons baking powder

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Perfection Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar with your hands until very light.
Add the milk and half of the flour a little at a time, beating well.
Fold in half of the beaten egg whites and one cup of flour lightly.
Add the remaining egg whites, sift the corn starch and baking powder with the remaining half cup of flour.
Fold in as lightly as possible with a baker's whisk.
Drop the batter around the edges of a large tube loaf pan, leaving the outer edges deeper than the center.
Do not smooth the batter on top.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,165 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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 lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Coconutfits better
Lemonthe original

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