Name: Nut and Fruit Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ pound pitted prunes; ½ pound seeded raisins; ½ pound stoned dates; ½ pound washed figs; ¼ pound blanched almonds; ¼ pound Brazil nuts; ¼ pound pecan nuts; juice of 2 oranges

Why it works: Almond and brazil nut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Nut and Fruit Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash the prunes and chop them with the raisins, dates, figs, almonds, Brazil nuts, and pecan nuts using a meat chopper.
Add the juice of 2 oranges and knead the mixture with your hands.
Pack the mixture into baking powder cans and set aside in a cool place.

Serve

When ready to serve, place the can in hot water, loosen the sides, and pull out the mixture.
Slice thinly to serve.

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.

Almond + brazil nuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together68 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together318 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together519 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Brazil nut + nutstop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together30 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Prunes: Provide sweetness and a soft, moist body that binds the chopped fruit and nuts.
Raisins: Add sweetness and moisture, helping the mixture hold together when packed.
Dates: Contribute natural sweetness and a sticky texture that helps bind the mixture.
Figs: Add sweetness, chewy texture, and moisture to the fruit mass.
Almonds: Add crunch and fat, giving the mixture texture and richness.

The step that matters

Packing the mixture into the cans. Packing it firmly and evenly removes air pockets, so the mixture holds its shape when unmolded and slices cleanly rather than crumbling.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, dates, fig, almond, brazil nut, orange):

Pistachiofits better
Mixed nutsfits better
Walnutfits better
Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, dates, fig, almond, brazil nut, orange. 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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Nut and Fruit Cheese Sandwiches