Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Tea Cake
Ingredients
Directions
Cream the coconut butter and caster sugar together.
Add the milk and mix well.
Beat the eggs until very light and fluffy.
Sift the flour and baking powder together.
Add the flour and eggs alternately to the creamed mixture.
Stir in the cinnamon.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Coconut + cinnamontop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together979 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,341 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,655 recipes
Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
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Coconut + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,648 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the coconut
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, milk, egg, flour, cinnamon):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Coconutthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, egg, flour, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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