Why it works: Chestnut and raisin share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Chestnuts with Raisins
Ingredients
Directions
Remove the chestnuts from their shells.
Boil the chestnuts in hot water for about 5 minutes until the skins are loose enough to rub off.
Continue cooking the chestnuts in hot water for about 1 hour.
Add well-washed raisins and cook until the chestnuts are mealy.
Add a little salt if desired.
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.
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Chestnut + raisintop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together65 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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