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Dessert

Raisin Cheese

A sweet raisin dessert made by boiling raisins with sugar, cinnamon, and cloves, then cooling and garnishing with candied lemon peel and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Raisin Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the pits from the raisins.

  2. Place the raisins in a saucepan with the sugar, cinnamon, and cloves.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the mixture for 1½ hours, stirring constantly.

  2. Allow the preparation to cool slightly, then pour it into a glass dish.

  3. Garnish with strips of candied lemon peel and citron.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 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

Raisins
Provide the main body and concentrated sweetness of the cheese as they cook down.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and thickens with the fruit, helps the mixture set.

The step that matters

Boiling for 1½ hours while stirring constantly. Long cooking drives off water and thickens the fruit and sugar into a firm, sliceable mass. Constant stirring prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan, which would give a burnt flavor.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, sugar, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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