Name: White Rocks
Ingredients: 1 lb flour; 1-2 lb butter; 1 lb sugar; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 3 eggs; ¼ to ½ cup milk; 1 lb mixed fruit (raisins, nuts, and citron)

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 ↓

White Rocks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

In a large bowl, mix the flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, and eggs until the dough starts to break.
Gradually add the milk until the mixture is well combined.
Fold in the mixed fruit.

Bake

Drop spoonfuls of the dough onto buttered baking pans.
Bake until golden brown.

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).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 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 and butter 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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and helps the cookies brown.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown and crisp at the edges.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking, helping the cookies rise and lighten.
Eggs: Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Milk: Adds moisture so the flour hydrates and the dough comes together.

Swap the nuts

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pistachiofits better
Nutsthe original

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

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.