Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Stewed Fruit
Ingredients
Directions
Make the syrup
Boil the sugar in water for 1 hour.
Cook and serve
Pick the raspberries and red currants.
Simmer the fruit gently in the syrup until tender.
Serve the fruit cold in a glass dish.
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 + red curranttop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,156 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Loaf sugar
- Dissolves into the water to make a sweet syrup that the fruit cooks in.
- Raspberries
- Provide the main fruit flavour and soften into tender pieces when simmered.
- Red currants
- Add a tart acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
The step that matters
Simmer the fruit gently in the syrup until tender.. Gentle heat softens the fruit while its cell walls hold together. A hard boil bursts the berries and turns the fruit mushy and cloudy.
“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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