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Dessert

Orange and Raisin Compote

A compote of muscatel raisins, oranges, and a brandy‑sherry mixture, sweetened with powdered sugar and caster sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange and Raisin Compote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the raisins

  1. Stone the raisins and mix them with the powdered sugar and brandy‑sherry mixture.

  2. Cover the mixture and set aside.

  3. Grate the rind of one orange and mix it with the raisin mixture.

Assemble and rest

  1. Peel the oranges, removing the outer rind and inner white pulp, and slice them thinly.

  2. In a deep dish, combine the sliced oranges with lemon juice and caster sugar.

  3. Pour the raisin mixture on top of the oranges.

  4. Cover and let sit for an hour, preferably on ice to enhance flavors before serving.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Muscatel raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness as they soak in the brandy-sherry mixture.
Sweet oranges
Supply the main fruit body, juice and fresh citrus flavour to the compote.
Powdered lump sugar
Dissolves easily into the soaking liquid, adding sweetness and helping draw out flavour from the raisins.
Brandy and sherry mixed
Adds aroma and depth, and softens the dried raisins as they soak.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the orange flavour.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, sherry, orange, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, sherry, orange, lemon. 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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