Name: Imperial Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup butter; 5 eggs; Zest of 1 lemon; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; ½ pound raisins, seeded and chopped; ½ cup walnuts or almonds, chopped; 1⅓ cups flour; 1 tablespoon baking powder; 1½ teaspoons baking soda

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Imperial Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
Stir in the lemon zest, lemon juice, raisins, and nuts.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.
Pour the batter into a greased and floured cake pan.
Bake in a slow oven at 275°F to 325°F (135°C to 160°C) for 2 to 2½ hours.

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,149 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Butter and flour 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 lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, raisin, walnut, flour):

Figfits better
Coconutfits better
Vanillafits better
Lemonthe original

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