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Dessert

Fruit Lozenges

Fruit lozenges made from boiled black currant jelly, cut into squares, dusted with flour, and stored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Lozenges

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Boil the black currant jelly until thick enough to cut.

  2. Pour the jelly onto a buttered plate.

  3. Cut the jelly into small squares.

Finish and store

  1. Once cold, remove the squares from the plate.

  2. Dust the squares with a little flour to prevent sticking.

  3. Store in a box.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Black currant + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Black currant + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Black currant jelly
Sets into firm, chewy squares as it cools and thickens when boiled.

The step that matters

Boil until thick enough to cut. Jelly must reach a sufficiently concentrated set point; if undercooked it stays soft and will not hold its shape when cut, while overcooking can make it stiff and grainy.

Swap the black currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour. 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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