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Dessert

Celestial Hash

A gelatin dessert made with dates, figs, grapes, walnuts, bananas, oranges, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Fig and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 104 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Celestial Hash

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Add boiling water and sherry wine to the mixture.

Add the fruit

  1. Stir in the chopped dates, figs, and white grapes.

  2. Add the walnuts, banana slices, and orange sections.

  3. Sweeten with sugar to taste.

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. Fig + bananatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together104 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Dates + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Fig + grapetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together323 recipes

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

  4. Fig + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together373 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Grape + bananatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable gel as it cools.
Dates
Add sweetness and soft body to the set gelatin.
Figs
Add sweetness and a soft, chewy texture.
Walnuts
Add crunch that contrasts with the soft gel and fruit.
Sherry wine
Adds aroma and a mild acidity to the liquid base.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, wine, dates, fig, grape, banana, orange):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Pecansfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, dates, fig, grape, banana, orange. 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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