Name: Apple Sauce Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; ½ teaspoon ground cloves; ½ cup butter, creamed; 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 cup raisins; a little nutmeg; 1 teaspoon baking soda; a bit of warm water

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple Sauce Cake

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).
Cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the cloves, cinnamon, salt, raisins, and nutmeg to the mixture.
Dissolve the baking soda in a bit of warm water and mix it in.
Pour the batter into a large square tin.
Bake for about one hour.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,377 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg):

Vanillafits better
Raisinthe original
Figfits about as well
Quincefits about as well

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