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Dessert

Heavenly Hash

A gelatin dessert made with sugar, candied cherries, nuts, raisins, citron, and vanilla, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Heavenly Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in 1½ pints of water.

  2. Add the sugar, candied cherries, mixed nuts, raisins, citron, and vanilla.

  3. Boil the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Let it cool.

  2. Chop the mixture finely.

  3. Serve with whipped 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mixed nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together12 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mixed nuts + vanillatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together782 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm mass that holds the fruit and nuts.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the fruit and citron.
Candied cherries
Add sweetness, colour and chewy fruit pieces throughout the set mixture.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the set mixture.
Mixed nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, rich contrast to the soft set mixture.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully before adding the other ingredients. Gelatine only sets when it is completely dissolved and evenly distributed. Undissolved granules leave soft spots or lumps, and the mixture may not firm up evenly as it cools.

Swap the mixed nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Mixed nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, raisin, vanilla, 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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