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Dessert

A Fruit Dessert

A fruit dessert made with raspberries, strawberries, currants, and a thickened mixture of sago or rice flour, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

A Fruit Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Combine raspberries, strawberries, currants, and water in a pot.

  2. Add sugar, citron, and cinnamon to taste.

  3. Cook for 30 to 40 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  5. Stir in sago or rice flour to thicken.

  6. Add chopped almonds and cook for another 20 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into jelly molds and refrigerate until cold.

  2. Serve with thick cold cream.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Cinnamon + ricetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sago or rice flour
Thickens the strained fruit liquid so it sets into a soft, sliceable pudding.
Strawberries
Add fruit body, sweetness and tartness to the pudding base.
Red raspberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and aroma of the pudding.
Currants
Add tartness and acidity that balances the sugar.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a bit of texture to the pudding.

The step that matters

Stirring in the sago or rice flour. Starch needs to be heated while stirred to swell and thicken the liquid. Added lumpy or left unstirred, it clumps and the pudding will not set evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, rice, almond, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, rice, almond, cream. 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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