Name: Cakes
Ingredients: flour; currants; sugar; caraway seed; butter; eggs; lemon peel; wine or cream

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Heat all ingredients for 1-2 hours before mixing.
Thoroughly dry and warm the flour.
Wash and dry the currants, then heat them.
Beat butter and eggs in a bowl over warm water.
Dust currants with dry flour and shake them.
Beat eggs separately until very light and strain them.
Pound sugar to a powder and sift it through a fine sieve.
Pare lemon peel thinly, beat with a little sugar, and mix with wine or cream.

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.

Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Caraway + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together270 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, caraway, butter, egg, lemon, wine):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, caraway, butter, egg, lemon, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.