Name: Fruit and Nut Creams
Ingredients: 1 cup raisins, seeded and chopped; 1 cup currants; 1 cup figs, chopped; 1 cup citron, chopped; 2 cups uncooked French Cream; 1 cup chopped nuts (almonds, hickory nuts, butternuts, or English walnuts)

Why it works: Raisin and fig work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 737 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Fruit and Nut Creams

Ingredients

1 cup raisins, seeded and chopped
1 cup currants
1 cup figs, chopped
1 cup citron, chopped
2 cups uncooked French Cream
1 cup chopped nuts (almonds, hickory nuts, butternuts, or English walnuts)

Directions

In a bowl, combine the chopped raisins, currants, figs, and citron with the uncooked French Cream while it is still soft.
Mix in the sugar until well combined.
Stir in the chopped nuts of your choice.
Form the mixture into balls, bars, or squares.

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 + figtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together737 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Currant + figtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together276 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Fig + nutstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together154 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Raisins: Add sweetness and chewy, moist texture through the cream.
Currants: Add concentrated sweetness and moisture, with a tart fruity note.
Figs: Add soft texture and natural sweetness that keeps the cream moist.
Citron: Adds candied sweetness and a distinct aromatic citrus flavour.
Nuts: Add crunch and contrast to the soft, sticky fruit mixture.

The step that matters

Combine the fruit while the cream is still soft. Cream stiffens as it sits, so mixing the fruit and nuts in while it is soft lets them distribute evenly. Working it later can leave pockets and make the mixture crumble when shaped into balls, bars, or squares.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, fig, cream, nuts):

Vanillafits better
Datesfits better
Coconutfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, fig, cream, nuts. 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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Currant Sherbet9 recipes

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Fruit and Nut Creams