Name: Old Fashioned Rusks
Ingredients: ½ pint milk; 1 walnut-sized piece of butter; 1 tablespoon lard; 1 egg; sugar to taste; yeast

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Old Fashioned Rusks

Ingredients

Directions

Warm the milk, butter, and lard together.
Beat the egg until very light.
Combine the warm mixture with the egg and enough yeast to make a sponge.
Let the sponge rise until light.
Add sugar to taste and mix well.
Place the dough close together in a pan to allow for better rising.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,832 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,236 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).