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Tutti Frutti Filling

A sweet filling made from sugar syrup, egg whites, walnuts, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and raisin work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Tutti Frutti Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil sugar and water until it threads.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the well-beaten egg whites, then beat until cool.

  3. Add chopped walnuts and raisins.

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. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + walnuttop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + raisintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Dissolves and cooks into a syrup that sweetens the filling and sets into a firm, glossy body.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that the hot syrup cooks and stiffens, giving the filling its light, airy structure.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, slightly bitter contrast to the sweet, soft base.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot enough to thread, because its heat partly cooks the egg white proteins and stabilizes the foam. As it cools while you beat, the mixture thickens into a stable, marshmallow-like mass instead of deflating or turning grainy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, raisin. 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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