Skip to main content

Tarta San Marcos

Spanish sponge typically eaten on celebrations. Originally on St Mark's Day.

By bbcgoodfood · From Open Recipes · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Vanilla and cocoa work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 357 recipes mention both. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Tarta San Marcos

Serves 20

Ingredients

  • For The Sponge
  • For The Syrup
  • For The Cream Filiing

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By bbcgoodfood. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Vanilla + cocoatop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Vanilla + cocoa powdertop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Cocoa powder + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-ethyl-3,6-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

Sugar and vanilla share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,032 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, cream, vanilla, cocoa powder):

  1. Almondbetter flavor fit
  2. Hazelnutbetter flavor fit
  3. Chestnutbetter flavor fit
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, cream, vanilla, cocoa powder. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).