Why it works: Persimmon and sake work together. They rank in the top 44% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1 recipes. Both carry isopentanol, which smells aroma-active. The science ↓
Persimmon, or Date Plum
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Fill an empty sake cask with unpeeled large astringent persimmons, ensuring they do not touch each other.
Seal and wait
Seal the cask tightly and let it sit for one to three weeks.
After this time, the persimmons will become sweet enough to eat.
Alternatively, sprinkle a little sake on the persimmons if using a non-sake cask.
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.
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Persimmon + saketop 44% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1 recipe
Shared aroma: isopentanol (aroma-active).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Large astringent persimmons
- The fruit's tannins make it astringent at first; sitting softens it and turns it sweet.
The step that matters
Seal the cask and wait the full one to three weeks. Astringency comes from tannins that break down slowly as the fruit ripens. Opening the cask too early leaves the persimmons astringent and not yet sweet.
“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.
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