Name: Home Made Cheese Cakes
Ingredients: 2 large eggs; ½ pint boiling milk; 1⅓ ounces sugar; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1⅓ ounces butter, melted; 1 ounce currants; grated rind of 1 lemon; 2 tablespoons thick cream; a little brandy

Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Home Made Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Pour the boiling milk over the well-beaten eggs.
Let the curd drain.
Add sugar, salt, melted butter, currants, lemon rind, thick cream, and brandy to the curd.
Mix well until 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.

Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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, milk, sugar, butter, currant, cream, brandy):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raspberryfits better
Lemonthe original

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