Name: Geneva Wafers
Ingredients: 3 oz fine flour; 2 oz castor sugar; 3 oz butter; 2 eggs; a few drops of vanilla essence; cream; apricot jam

Why it works: Vanilla and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 608 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Geneva Wafers

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
Beat in each egg one at a time.
Add a few drops of vanilla essence.
Gently fold in the flour until just 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.

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.

Vanilla + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together608 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 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

Swap the apricot

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

Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits about as well
Apricotthe original

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