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Dessert

Fruit Dessert Dish

A layered fruit dessert of strawberries, currants, and raspberries, sweetened with sugar and finished with brandy or white wine and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: White currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Fruit Dessert Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Layer the strawberries, currants, and raspberries in a dessert dish, alternating each type.

  2. Sprinkle each layer generously with sifted sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, pour the brandy or white wine mixed with lemon juice over the top.

  2. Gently stir the fruit with a spoon before serving.

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. White currant + red curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit body, sweetness and juice once sugared.
Currants
Add tart acidity and a bright flavour that balances the sugar.
Raspberries
Add aroma and tartness, with a softer texture than the currants.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice that forms a syrup.
Brandy or white wine
Adds aromatic alcohol flavour that is poured over the fruit before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the brandy or wine just before serving. Alcohol gives aroma and flavour, but it evaporates and fades with time, and fruit left soaking can soften and lose texture. Adding the liquid shortly before serving keeps the fruit firm and the flavour sharp.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar, brandy, lemon):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar, brandy, lemon. 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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