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Dessert

Currants to Ick

Candied currants coated in beaten egg white and sugar, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Currants to Ick

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take fresh currants in bunches.

  2. Dip them in the beaten egg white.

  3. Lay them out on a tray.

Sugar and dry

  1. Sift double refined sugar over them thickly.

  2. Dry them in a stove or oven.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

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

  3. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Fresh currants
The fruit being candied; it dries while the sugar coating sets around it.
Egg white
Helps the sugar stick to the currants and dries into a crisp, glossy shell.
Double refined sugar
Dries into a crisp, sweet crust over the fruit.

The step that matters

Sift the sugar over the currants thickly. Sugar packed evenly over the egg-white coating dries into a crisp, even shell. Bare or thin patches can stay sticky or let the fruit dry unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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