Name: Jelly Moulded with Cherries
Ingredients: ripe fruit (such as peaches, apricots, plums, apples, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, cherries, currants); sugar; clear syrup (optional)

Why it works: Peach and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Jelly Moulded with Cherries

Ingredients

ripe fruit (such as peaches, apricots, plums, apples, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, cherries, currants)
sugar
clear syrup (optional)

Directions

Select ripe, nice-looking fruit and remove stalks, except for currants.
Put a little jelly at the bottom of a mould and let it harden.
Arrange the fruit around the sides of the mould, remembering it will be reversed when turned out.
Pour in more jelly to make the fruit adhere and let that layer set.
Repeat layering fruit and jelly until the mould is full.
If possible, chill in ice until ready to serve.
To unmould, wring a cloth in boiling water, wrap it around the mould for a minute, and carefully turn out the jelly.

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.

Peach + apricottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together342 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Apricot + plumtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together284 recipes

Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).
Peach + plumtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Apple + grapetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,659 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together404 recipes

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

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peach, apricot, plum, apple, grape, sugar, syrup):

Pearfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, apricot, plum, apple, grape, sugar, syrup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.