Name: Bread Cheese Cakes
Ingredients: 1 large French roll; 1 cup boiling milk; 4 eggs; ¼ pound butter, melted; 1 teaspoon nutmeg; 1 tablespoon lemon essence; 2 tablespoons sugar; ½ pound currants; puff pastry

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bread Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the French roll very thinly.
Pour boiling milk over the slices and let it cool.
In a bowl, mix the cooled milk with eggs, melted butter, nutmeg, lemon essence, sugar, and currants.
Pour the mixture into puff pastry as you would for other cheese cakes.

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.

Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,685 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Orangefits better
Currantthe original

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