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 ↓
Currants
Ingredients
Directions
Gather ripe currants and wash them well in a colander.
Pick the currants carefully from the stems.
Place them in a glass dish and sprinkle with sugar.
Stir the sugar through the fruit and let it sit for 30 minutes before serving.
Serve chilled, optionally with cream.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
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Currant + creamtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,829 recipes
Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):
- Vanillafits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Raspberryfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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