Name: Wine Roll
Ingredients: 1 penny French roll; raisin wine; pistard or cream; sugar; lemon juice; nonpareil comfits; blanched almonds (slit)

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

Soak the French roll in raisin wine until it absorbs as much as possible.
Place the soaked roll in a dish.
Pour pistard or cream, sugar, and lemon juice around the roll.
Just before serving, sprinkle nonpareil comfits on top or insert a few slit blanched almonds into the roll.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,781 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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).

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

Swap the lemon

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Peachfits better
Lemonthe original

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