Name: Princess Cakes
Ingredients: ½ pound butter; ½ pound sugar; 1 pound rice flour; 6 eggs; ⅓ cup sweet wine; 1 teaspoon caraway seeds; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ¼ pound raisins; water (as needed to form a batter)

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 ↓

Princess Cakes

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 the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

Make and bake

Add the rice flour, eggs, sweet wine, caraway seeds, baking soda, and raisins.
Mix well and add water to form a batter.
Drop spoonfuls of the batter into buttered pans.
Bake until done.

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).
Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,435 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Caraway + raisintop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together75 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together565 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the cakes a tender crumb.
Sugar: Creams with the butter and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Rice flour: Forms the main body of the batter, providing structure once baked.
Eggs: Bind the batter and set during baking to give structure.
Baking soda: Reacts with the batter to help the cakes rise.
Sweet wine: Adds moisture and aroma to the batter.

Swap the caraway

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Capersfits about as well
Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, rice, flour, egg, wine, 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.