Name: Raisin Filling
Ingredients: ½ pound seeded raisins; 1 cup plain icing; Juice of ½ lemon

Why it works: Raisin and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,742 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Raisin Filling

Ingredients

½ pound seeded raisins
1 cup plain icing
Juice of ½ lemon

Directions

Chop the seeded raisins.
Add the chopped raisins to the plain icing.
Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon and mix well.

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 + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,742 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

Seeded raisins: Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness that fills the filling.
Plain icing: Acts as the sweet, creamy base that holds the raisins together.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the icing and raisins.

“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.