Name: Mock Cherry
Ingredients: 1 cup cranberries; 1 cup sugar; ½ cup raisins; 2 tablespoons flour; ½ cup cold water

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Cherry

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cut cranberries in halves and wash to remove seeds.
Chop cranberries with raisins and add remaining ingredients.
Line a tin with plain pastry.
Fill with the mixture and cover with a pastry that has been pricked to allow steam to escape.
Insert a narrow strip of pastry between lining and top, moisten with cold water, and press edges together.

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).