Name: An Excellent Trifle
Ingredients: maccaroons; ratafia-drops; raisin wine; custard (made with 4 eggs and rich flour); raspberry jam; rich cream (made with 2 egg whites, sugar, lemon peel, and raisin wine)

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 ↓

An Excellent Trifle

Ingredients

maccaroons
ratafia-drops
raisin wine
custard (made with 4 eggs and rich flour)
raspberry jam
rich cream (made with 2 egg whites, sugar, lemon peel, and raisin wine)

Directions

Layer maccaroons and ratafia-drops at the bottom of a dish.
Pour in enough raisin wine to soak them.
Add a layer of cold custard made with 4 eggs and rich flour, about 2-3 inches thick.
Spread a layer of raspberry jam on top.
Cover with a high whip of rich cream made the day before, using 2 beaten egg whites, sugar, lemon peel, and raisin wine.

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).
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).

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, flour, cream, sugar, lemon):

Vanillafits better
Figfits about as well
Orangefits about as well
Raspberrythe original

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