Name: Raspberry Cream Drops
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon raspberry jam or ½ tablespoon raspberry juice; Almond paste (to taste); Confectioners' sugar (as needed); Cream (white or pale pink); 1-2 drops almond essence

Why it works: Raspberry and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 552 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Raspberry Cream Drops

Ingredients

1 tablespoon raspberry jam or ½ tablespoon raspberry juice
Almond paste (to taste)
Confectioners' sugar (as needed)
Cream (white or pale pink)
1-2 drops almond essence

Directions

Make the drops

Mix raspberry jam or juice with almond paste and confectioners' sugar until it forms a dull greyish pink paste.
Shape the paste into small balls.

Flavor and finish

Prepare cream and flavor it with 1-2 drops of almond essence.
Drop the balls into the flavored cream.

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.

Raspberry + almondtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together552 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Raspberry + creamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,332 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,130 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Raspberry jam or juice: Provides the raspberry flavor and the pink color of the paste.
Almond paste: Gives the paste body and a rich, sweet almond flavor.
Confectioners' sugar: Sweetens the paste and stiffens it so it holds its shape.
Cream: Forms the soft, light base that the paste balls sit in.