Name: Currant Salad
Ingredients: ½ pound white currants; ½ pound red currants; ½ pound strawberries; ½ pound cherries; white sugar; thick cream or Devonshire cream

Why it works: White currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Currant Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pick equal weights of white and red currants, strawberries, and cherries.

Assemble and serve

Place the fruits in alternate layers on a high dish.
Strew a little white sugar on each layer.
Pour thick cream over the whole or place small lumps of Devonshire cream at intervals on the fruit.

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.

White currant + red curranttop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
White currant + sugartop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together59 recipes
Red currant + creamtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together247 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).