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Dessert

Fruit Creams

A flat cake made by mixing raisins, currants, figs, and citron with French cream and spreading the mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and fig work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fruit Creams

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the seeded raisins, currants, figs, and citron into the French cream before it thickens.

  2. Spread the mixture into a flat cake about 1 inch thick.

  3. Cut the cake into oblong pieces or squares.

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.

  1. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Raisin + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,642 recipes

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

  5. Fig + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together523 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Seeded raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture to the fruit mixture.
Currants
Add small pockets of concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture throughout the cake.
Figs
Add sweetness, body, and a soft, chewy texture to the mixture.
Citron
Adds a distinct, aromatic, slightly bitter citrus-peel flavour.
French cream
Adds richness and moisture, and holds the fruit together so the mixture can be spread.

The step that matters

Mix the fruit into the cream before it thickens. Once the cream thickens, it stops spreading and clinging to the fruit, so the pieces will not distribute evenly. Mixing early keeps the fruit evenly dispersed and lets the mixture spread into a uniform flat cake.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, fig, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Datesfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, fig, cream. 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.

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