Name: Egg-cocoaxut Cheesecake
Ingredients: 12 hard-boiled eggs; ½ pound butter; ½ pound pounded loaf sugar; ½ pound currants; a little nutmeg; brandy (optional); essence of lemon or almond (optional)

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 ↓

Egg-cocoaxut Cheesecake

Ingredients

Directions

Rub the hard-boiled eggs through a sieve while hot.
In a bowl, mix the sieved eggs with butter, sugar, currants, and nutmeg.
Add brandy or essence of lemon or almond if desired.
Blend until smooth and well combined.

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).
Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,311 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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 lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sugar, currant, nutmeg, brandy):

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Lemonthe original

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