Name: Walnut Cream Cake
Ingredients: genoise cake; plain or vanilla buttercream; apricot puree; finely chopped walnuts; water icing or fondant icing; shelled walnuts for decoration

Why it works: Vanilla and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 608 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Walnut Cream Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the genoise cake into layers like Coffee Cake.
Split the layers open and spread with buttercream.
Glaze the sides with apricot puree and dip in chopped walnuts.
Cover the top with water icing or fondant icing for best results.
Mark the top into squares using icing forced through a small plain tube.
Place a shelled walnut in the center of each square and decorate the edges with a small star tube.

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.

Vanilla + apricottop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together608 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).
Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,730 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Apricot + walnuttop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together180 recipes

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