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Raisin Cheese

A sweet raisin compote flavored with cinnamon and cloves, garnished with angelica and candied citron peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Raisin Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Stone the raisins.

  2. Add the sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

  3. Stew the mixture for 1½ hours in a jar placed in a saucepan of boiling water.

Set and serve

  1. When cool, pour into a glass dish.

  2. Garnish with strips of angelica and citron.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + angelicatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Clove + angelicatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together84 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide the main fruit body, sweetness, and a soft, chewy texture once stewed.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it concentrates during stewing, helps the fruit set into a thick mass.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma that complements the stewed fruit.

The step that matters

Stewing the mixture for 1½ hours in a water bath. Gentle, indirect heat from the boiling water in the saucepan lets the raisins soften and release their juices slowly, while the jar protects the mixture from scorching. Too much direct heat would risk burning the sugar and fruit before they thicken evenly.

Swap the angelica

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Angelicathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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