Name: Cakes
Ingredients: currants; flour; beaten cloves; allspice; butter; sugar; eggs; lemon-peel

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and dry the currants, then set them by the fire to dry completely.
Sift the flour and mix in a little beaten cloves and allspice.
Beat the butter to a cream, then add the sugar and mix well.
Beat the eggs until well mixed, strain them, and use immediately.
Powder and sift the sugar before adding it to the mixture.
Cut the lemon-peel thin and beat it to a paste before adding it to the batter.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,083 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,359 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, clove, allspice, butter, sugar, egg, lemon):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Currantthe original

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