Name: Scotch Seed Cake
Ingredients: 2 pounds light-bread dough; 12 ounces sugar; 12 ounces butter; 6 ounces sugar; 8 ounces butter or poultry fat; 8 ounces dried cherries or raisins; ½ cup strong saffron tea; 1 pound flour; 1 or 2 eggs (optional)

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Scotch Seed Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

Prepare 2 pounds of light-bread dough.
Mix in 12 ounces of sugar and 12 ounces of butter.
Add 6 ounces of sugar, 8 ounces of butter or poultry fat, and 8 ounces of dried cherries or raisins.
Stir in ½ cup of strong saffron tea and 1 pound of flour.
If desired, beat in 1 or 2 eggs.

Shape and bake

Shape the mixture like Scotch seed cake.
Bake as you would bread.

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Raisin + saffrontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Saffron + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together447 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Light-bread dough: Forms the base structure that the rich additions are worked into.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Flour: Adds structure once the dough is enriched with the other ingredients.
Dried cherries or raisins: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.

Swap the saffron

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Capersfits better
Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter, raisin, tea, flour, egg. 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.