Name: Rock Jumbles
Ingredients: 1½ cups granulated sugar; 1 cup butter; 3 eggs; 3 cups flour (or more if needed); 1 cup raisins or currants; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ½ cup hot water; 1 cup chopped nuts; 2 teaspoons cinnamon

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 ↓

Rock Jumbles

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, cream together the granulated sugar and butter.
Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Mix in the flour, raisins or currants, baking soda dissolved in hot water, chopped nuts, and cinnamon.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets.
If the mixture is too thin, it will spread too much.

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).
Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 nuts

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pistachiofits better
Nutsthe original

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