Name: Tipsy Cake, or Brandy Trifle
Ingredients: light sponge cake or Savoy cake; good French brandy; blanched almonds, cut into spikes; white wine; juice of ½ lemon; whipped cream; fresh strawberries; macaroons; melted barley sugar

Why it works: Almond and barley share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78 recipes. Both carry acetylpyrazine, which smells roast. The science ↓

Tipsy Cake, or Brandy Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the sponge or Savoy cake in as much French brandy as it can absorb.
Insert blanched almond spikes into the cake.
Pour a mixture of white wine and brandy over the cake, along with the lemon juice.
To make the basket, dip the edges of macaroons in melted barley sugar and fasten them together.
Remove the basket from the mold and keep it in a dry place until needed.
Fill the basket with whipped cream that has been drained through a sieve.
Top with fine ripe strawberries just before serving.

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 + barleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together78 recipes

Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).
Brandy + white winetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together620 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,832 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brandy, almond, white wine, cream, barley, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Apricotfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, almond, white wine, cream, barley, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.