Name: Queen of Chocolate Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; 1 cup butter; 3 eggs; 1 cup milk; 1¼ cups flour; ½ cup dry cocoa; 1 teaspoon vanilla; 3 heaping teaspoons baking powder

Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Queen of Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the baking powder.
Mix in the milk, flour, cocoa, and vanilla until well combined.
Save the white of one egg for frosting.

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.

Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together357 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,187 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together643 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 cocoa

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Hazelnutfits about as well
Cocoathe original

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