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Dessert

Red Raspberry or Currant Float

A chilled float made with raspberry or currant juice, sugar, egg whites, powdered sugar, and cold cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Red Raspberry or Currant Float

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the red raspberry or currant juice with ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a very stiff froth, then gradually add ½ cup of powdered sugar.

  3. Press the raspberries through a strainer to remove seeds.

Make the float

  1. Gradually beat the juice with the sugar and egg mixture until stiff peaks form.

  2. Chill thoroughly on ice.

Serve

  1. Serve in a glass dish half filled with cold cream, and heap the mixture on top in peaks.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Red raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Red raspberry + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Red raspberry or currant juice
Supplies the fruit flavour and the liquid that is beaten into the foam.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that traps air and gives the float its light structure.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the egg whites, keeping the foam smooth and stable.
Cold cream
Forms the rich base in the glass dish under the fruit foam.

The step that matters

Gradually beat the juice with the sugar and egg mixture until stiff peaks form.. Adding the juice slowly lets the foam absorb it and keep its structure. Adding it too fast can deflate the whites, and overbeating makes the mixture dry and grainy.

Swap the red raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Red raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cream. 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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