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Dessert

Fruit and Nut Creams

A mixture of raisins, currants, figs, citron, and nuts bound with uncooked French cream and sugar, formed into shapes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 993 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fruit and Nut Creams

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the raisins, currants, figs, and citron with the uncooked French cream while it is still soft.

  2. Stir in the sugar until fully mixed.

  3. Add the chopped nuts of your choice and mix well.

  4. Form the mixture into balls, bars, 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. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

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

  3. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Almond + butternuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

French cream
Provides richness and moisture, binding the fruit and nuts into a soft, shapeable mass.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture from concentrated natural sugars.
Figs
Add sweetness, moisture, and a soft, dense body to the mixture.
Currants
Add tart-sweet flavor and chewy pieces that break up the creamy base.
Almonds
Add crunch and nutty fat that contrasts with the soft cream and fruit.

The step that matters

Mix the fruit into the cream while it is still soft. Cream firms as it cools or sits, so once it stiffens the fruit will not blend evenly and the mixture becomes hard to shape into balls, bars, or squares.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, fig, cream, almond, nuts, butternut, walnut. 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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