Name: Oriental Fruit Bread
Ingredients: 1 quart lukewarm water; a pinch of salt; ⅓ cup olive oil; 1 pound dates; coarsely ground wheat (enough to make a dough)

Why it works: Olive and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,100 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Oriental Fruit Bread

Ingredients

Directions

In a large bowl, combine lukewarm water, salt, and olive oil.
Wash and remove the pits from the dates, then add them to the water mixture.
Grind the wheat coarsely and gradually add it to the mixture until a dough forms.

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.

Olive + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,100 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Dates + wheattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together69 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Olive + datestop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together51 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).