Name: Boiled Frosting No. I
Ingredients: chopped walnuts; chopped almonds; chopped hickory nuts; chopped Brazil nuts; chopped figs; chopped dates; chopped raisins

Why it works: Almond and brazil nut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Boiled Frosting No. I

Ingredients

Directions

Combine chopped nuts and dried fruits in a bowl.
Mix them together in any desired combination.

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.

Almond + brazil nuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together68 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Walnut + brazil nuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together66 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together318 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Walnut + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together993 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, almond, brazil nut, fig, dates, raisin):

Pistachiofits better
Mixed nutsfits better
Chestnutfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, almond, brazil nut, fig, dates, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.