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Dessert

Raisin Cheese

A sweet dessert made by boiling raisins with sugar, cloves, and nutmeg, then cooling and garnishing with candied fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Raisin Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the raisin cheese

  1. Stir the raisins and place them in a saucepan.

  2. Add sugar, cloves, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Boil for 1.5 hours.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Serve

  1. Pour into a serving dish.

  2. Garnish with thin strips of candied 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.

  1. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Raisins
Provide the bulk of the mixture and, as they cook down, its thick, sweet body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture thicken and set as it cools.

The step that matters

Boiling for 1.5 hours. Long cooking evaporates water from the raisins so the mixture thickens into a spreadable paste. Stopping early leaves it runny, while overcooking can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, nutmeg. 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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