Name: Indian Trifle
Ingredients: white sugar; boiled custard; red currant jelly; spare rice

Why it works: Red currant and rice work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 56 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Indian Trifle

Ingredients

white sugar
boiled custard
red currant jelly
spare rice

Directions

Prepare a sweet dish with white sugar and let it cool.
Cut the cooled dish into the shape of a star.
Remove the spare rice and fill the gaps with boiled custard.
Decorate the dish with spots of red currant jelly.

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.

Red currant + ricetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together56 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + ricetop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,744 recipes

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