Name: Fruit Scones
Ingredients: 2 tablespoons fat; 1 cup flour; 3 tablespoons sugar; ½ cup seedless raisins; milk (for brushing); 1 egg (for brushing)

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Scones

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

Make a tea biscuit mixture by combining fat, flour, sugar, and raisins.
Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into rounds 5 to 6 inches in diameter; score each round into quarters.

Bake

Brush the tops with milk and beaten egg.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Provides the structure that holds the scones together as they bake.
Fat: Shortens the dough, giving a tender, crumbly texture rather than a tough one.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the tops brown during baking.
Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the scones.
Egg: Brushed on top, it promotes a glossy, golden browned crust.