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Dessert

Wine Roll

A French roll soaked in raisin wine, topped with custard or cream, sugar, lemon juice, and optional nonpareil confetti or blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Wine Roll

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the French roll in raisin wine until it absorbs as much as possible.

  2. Place the soaked roll in a dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour custard or cream mixed with sugar and lemon juice around the roll.

  2. Just before serving, sprinkle nonpareil confetti on top or insert blanched sliced almonds.

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. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

French roll
Soaks up the wine and forms the soft, absorbent base of the dessert.
Raisin wine
Soaks into the roll, flavouring it and moistening its crumb.
Custard or cream
Adds richness and moisture around the soaked roll.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard or cream poured over the roll.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet custard or cream.

The step that matters

Soaking the French roll. The roll must absorb as much wine as it can to carry the flavour and become soft throughout. A dry centre will stay tough and taste of bread rather than wine, so the soak needs enough time for the wine to penetrate fully.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, wine, cream, sugar, lemon):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Chickpeafits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, wine, cream, sugar, lemon. 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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