Name: Cherry Creams
Ingredients: fondant; candied cherries; chopped nuts; candied fruit; powdered sugar; bitter chocolate

Why it works: Nuts and chocolate work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 440 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cherry Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Form a piece of fondant into a ball and flatten it.
Press a candied cherry into the center of the top.
Chop together nuts and candied fruit.
Mix a small quantity of the chopped mixture with an equal quantity of flavored fondant.
Form into balls and roll in powdered sugar.
Work coarsely chopped nuts into fondant until well combined.
Form into a flat cake and spread with melted bitter chocolate.
Cut into 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.

Nuts + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,404 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Nuts + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,228 recipes

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