Name: Nut and Fruit Cheese Sandwiches
Ingredients: ½ pound pitted prunes; ½ pound seeded raisins; ½ pound stoned dates; ¼ 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

Wash the prunes and mix with raisins, dates, figs, almonds, Brazil nuts, and pecan nuts.
Pass the mixture through a meat chopper, alternating between fruit and nuts until fully combined.
Add the juice of 2 oranges and knead the mixture with your hands.
Pack the mixture into baking powder cans and store in a cool place.
When ready to serve, place the can in hot water, loosen the sides, and pull out the cheese.
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

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.