Name: Parfaits of Chestnuts or Candied Fruits
Ingredients: 1 cup boiled chestnuts or candied fruits soaked in brandy; powdered sugar; ice; salt

Why it works: Chestnut and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Parfaits of Chestnuts or Candied Fruits

Ingredients

1 cup boiled chestnuts or candied fruits soaked in brandy
powdered sugar
ice
salt

Directions

Prepare

Prepare an angel parfait.
Soak the chestnuts or candied fruits in brandy for 30 minutes, then drain well.
Roll the drained chestnuts or fruits in powdered sugar.
Mix the sugared chestnuts or fruits into the parfait.

Mould and chill

Mould the mixture.
Pack it in ice and salt for 3 hours.

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.

Chestnut + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts or candied fruits: Provide the main chunky texture and sweet flavour in the parfait.
Powdered sugar: Sweetens the fruit or chestnuts and helps coat them evenly.

“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.