Name: An Excellent Trifle
Ingredients: macaroons; ratafia drops; raisin wine; rich custard; raspberry jam; heavy cream; 2 egg whites; sugar; lemon peel

Why it works: Raspberry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

An Excellent Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Layer macaroons and ratafia drops in the bottom of a dish.
Pour in enough raisin wine to soak them.
Prepare rich custard with more eggs and some rice flour, then pour it over the soaked macaroons.
Add a layer of raspberry jam on top of the custard.
Whip heavy cream with egg whites, sugar, and lemon peel until fluffy, then spread it over the jam.
For best flavor, prepare the whipped cream a day in advance.

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.

Raspberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,109 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,157 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Wine + raspberrytop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together303 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Swap the raisin

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

Blackberryfits better
Vanillafits better
Peachfits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, raspberry, cream, egg, sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.