Name: Nut and Fruit Cheese
Ingredients: ½ pound figs; ½ pound raisins; ½ pound dates; ½ pound pecan nuts; ½ pound pine nuts; ¼ pound Brazil nut meats; ¼ pound almond nut meats

Why it works: Brazil nut and almond share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Nut and Fruit Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the ingredients by chopping the figs, raisins, dates, pecan nuts, and pine nuts.
Pass the chopped fruit and nuts through a meat chopper, alternating between fruit and mixed nuts until all are ground.
Pack the mixture into small tins.

Serve

When ready to use, loosen and slice thinly with a sharp knife.
This is great for sandwiches and can be stored indefinitely in the refrigerator.

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.

Brazil nut + almondtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together68 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Pine + brazil nuttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together22 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pine + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together176 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together318 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Figs: Provide sweetness and a soft, sticky body that binds the mixture together.
Dates: Add natural sweetness and moisture that helps the mixture hold its shape when packed.
Raisins: Add sweetness and moisture, softening the texture of the ground mixture.
Pecan nuts: Contribute fat and rich flavour, giving the cheese body and a crumbly bite.
Pine nuts: Add fat and a buttery flavour that enriches the texture.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fig, raisin, nuts, pine, brazil nut, meat, almond):

Coconutfits better
Vanillafits better
Cherryfits about as well
Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fig, raisin, nuts, pine, brazil nut, meat, almond. 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.