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Dessert

Sultana Roll

A dessert roll made with pistachio ice cream, soaked sultana raisins, sweetened beaten cream, pistachio cream, ice, salt, and claret sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Sultana Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Line a pound baking powder box with pistachio ice cream.

  2. Sprinkle soaked sultana raisins inside.

  3. Fill the center with sweetened beaten cream flavored with vanilla.

  4. Cover with pistachio cream.

Freeze

  1. Pack in equal quantities of ice and salt for 1.5 hours.

Make the claret sauce

  1. To make claret sauce, boil sugar and water for 8 minutes.

  2. Cool slightly and add claret.

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. Pistachio + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Pistachio + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Brandy + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together806 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pistachio ice cream
Forms the frozen outer layer that lines and holds the mold's shape.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy sweetness and fruit flavour through the filling.
Beaten cream
Whipped air gives the filling a light, creamy texture.
Claret
Adds wine flavour and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Packing with ice and salt. Salt lowers the freezing point of melting ice, making the brine colder than plain ice so the roll freezes firm. Packing it evenly keeps the roll set throughout.

Swap the pistachio

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiothe original
  4. Brazil nutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, raisin, brandy, vanilla, sugar. 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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