Name: Piquette, the New French Drink
Ingredients: 5 pounds of raisins; 5 pounds of dried apples; 5 gallons of water; ½ teaspoon sugar; a bit of cinnamon

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Piquette, the New French Drink

Ingredients

Directions

Steep the fruit

Combine raisins, dried apples, and water in an open cask.
Let the mixture stand for three days.

Bottle and adjust

Bottle the liquid, adding ½ teaspoon of sugar and a bit of cinnamon to each bottle.
Adjust the flavor to your preference.

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.

Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,390 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,920 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

Raisins: Provide sugars and fruity body that give the drink its base flavor and sweetness.
Dried apples: Add sugars and mild fruit flavor that round out the raisin character.
Sugar: Adds sweetness at bottling, letting the cook fine-tune the final flavor.