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Dessert

Wine Roll

A French roll soaked in raisin wine, topped with custard or cream, sugar, lemon juice, and garnished with nonpareil confections.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. 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.

  3. Pour custard or cream around the roll.

Finish and serve

  1. Add sugar and lemon juice to the custard or cream.

  2. Just before serving, sprinkle nonpareil confections on top or insert blanched split 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. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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

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

  4. Raisin + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, moist base of the dish.
Raisin wine
Soaks into the roll, adding flavour and moisture.
Custard or cream
Surrounds the roll, providing richness and a creamy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the custard or cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the custard or cream.

The step that matters

Soaking the roll. The roll must absorb as much wine as it can, because a dry centre stays firm and tastes of bread rather than wine. Soaking evenly gives the roll a uniformly moist, flavourful texture.

Swap the almond

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

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

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