Name: Almond Cheese-cakes
Ingredients: 6 ounces sweet almonds; ½ ounce bitter almonds; 2 tablespoons rose or orange-flower water; 8 tablespoons fresh butter; 4 eggs; a little cream; 6 tablespoons sifted sugar; a little nutmeg

Why it works: Almond and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Cheese-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch and dry the sweet and bitter almonds.
Pound the almonds in a mortar to a fine paste with the rose or orange-flower water.
Cream the fresh butter and add it to the almond paste.
Beat the eggs with a little cream, sifted sugar, and nutmeg.
Mix all ingredients together until well 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.

Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,115 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,465 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, rose, butter, egg, cream, sugar):

Nutmegthe original
Cinnamonfits about as well
Tarragonfits less well
Capersfits less well

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