Name: Almond Cheese Cake Mixture
Ingredients: ½ lb. sweet almonds; grated rind of 1 lemon; 2 egg whites, stiffly whipped; 3 bitter almonds, blanched and pounded; 1 teaspoon brandy; 1 tablespoon thick cream; 1 oz. butter; ½ lb. caster sugar

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Almond Cheese Cake Mixture

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, mix the sweet almonds, caster sugar, lemon rind, and melted butter.
Add the brandy and cream, then gently fold in the whipped egg whites.
Spoon a little of the mixture into patty pans lined with puff pastry.

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.

Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 (almond, egg, brandy, cream, butter, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Lemonthe original

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