Name: Excellent Trifle
Ingredients: macaroons; ratafia drops; raisin wine; rich custard (made with extra eggs and rice flour); raspberry jam; rich cream; 2 egg whites; sugar; lemon peel

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Excellent Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Layer macaroons and ratafia drops in the bottom of a dish.
Pour enough raisin wine over them to soak.
Add a layer of cold rich custard made with extra eggs and rice flour, about 2-3 inches thick.
Spread a layer of raspberry jam on top.
Whip rich cream with 2 beaten egg whites, sugar, and lemon peel until fluffy.
Cover the trifle with the whipped cream mixture.
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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Raisin + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together565 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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 raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, wine, egg, rice, flour, cream, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Coconutfits about as well
Raspberrythe original

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