Name: Madeira Cake
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 1 cup flour; ½ cup milk (optional); 1 dessertspoon caraway seeds (for Seed Cake); 2 tablespoons desiccated coconut (for Coconut Cake); 6 oz candied cherries, chopped in halves (for Cherry Cake); 6 oz sultanas (for Sultana Cake); grated rind of 1 lemon (for Sultana Cake); grated yellow part of 2 lemon rinds (for Lemon Cake)

Why it works: Coconut and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 294 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Madeira Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

2 eggs
1 cup flour
½ cup milk (optional)
1 dessertspoon caraway seeds (for Seed Cake)
2 tablespoons desiccated coconut (for Coconut Cake)
6 oz candied cherries, chopped in halves (for Cherry Cake)
6 oz sultanas (for Sultana Cake)
grated rind of 1 lemon (for Sultana Cake)
grated yellow part of 2 lemon rinds (for Lemon Cake)

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Whisk the eggs to a stiff froth and add to the mixture.
Gently stir in the flour until well combined.
Add a little milk if the mixture is too stiff.

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.

Coconut + cherrytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together294 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Caraway + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together270 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,648 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,301 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 (egg, flour, milk, coconut, cherry, lemon):

Cinnamonfits better
Turmericfits better
Nutmegfits better
Carawaythe original

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