Name: A Dessert of Chestnuts
Ingredients: Spanish chestnuts; egg whites; powdered sugar

Why it works: Chestnut and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 647 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

A Dessert of Chestnuts

Ingredients

Spanish chestnuts
egg whites
powdered sugar

Directions

Boil the Spanish chestnuts until very soft.
Pass the chestnuts through a sieve to make a pulp.
Beat the egg whites with powdered sugar until thick and frothy.
Pile the chestnut pulp in a dish and cover thickly with the whipped egg whites just before serving.

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.

Chestnut + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Chestnut + eggtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together660 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).