Why it works: Apricot and currant work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 188 recipes mention both. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Roll out the puff paste to ⅛ inch thick and cut into fancy patterns.
Place the cut shapes on a baking sheet and sprinkle with fine sugar.
Bake until lightly golden, then let cool.
Stack the rounds, alternating layers of apricot jam and currant jelly.
Spread apricot jam on the outside of the stacked rounds.
Decorate the top and sides with baked puff shapes and pistachio kernels.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Apricot + curranttop 6% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together188 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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Apricot + pistachiotop 7% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together188 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Apricot + sugartop 9% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together3,629 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Currant + sugartop 13% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together12,256 recipes
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Sugar + pistachiotop 13% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together1,233 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Currant and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 12,256 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Flavor stand-ins for the pistachio
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, currant, sugar):
- Almondbetter flavor fit
- Chestnutbetter flavor fit
- Pecansabout as good a flavor fit
- Pistachiothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, currant, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).
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