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Dessert

Iced Currants

Currants dipped in beaten egg whites and water, rolled in powdered sugar, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Iced Currants

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Mix the beaten egg whites with water.

Coat and dry

  1. Dip the currants, one bunch at a time, into the mixture.

  2. Let them drain for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Roll the drained currants in finely powdered sugar.

  4. Lay them on paper to dry until the sugar crystallizes.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Egg whites
Form a thin, sticky coating that holds the powdered sugar to the currants.
Finely powdered sugar
Forms a crisp, frosted sweet shell as it dries on the currants.
Currants
Serve as the fruit base that is coated and frosted.

The step that matters

Drain the currants before rolling them in sugar. If the dipped currants are still wet, the sugar clumps and dissolves instead of forming an even, dry crystalline coat. Draining for the stated time lets excess egg white run off so the sugar adheres in a thin layer.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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