Name: Fruit and Nut Creams
Ingredients: 1 cup raisins, seeded and chopped; 1 cup currants; 1 cup figs, chopped; 1 cup citron, chopped; 2 cups French Cream (uncooked); 1 cup mixed nuts (almonds, hickory nuts, butternuts, or English walnuts), chopped; Sugar to taste

Why it works: Fig and mixed nuts share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fruit and Nut Creams

Ingredients

1 cup raisins, seeded and chopped
1 cup currants
1 cup figs, chopped
1 cup citron, chopped
2 cups French Cream (uncooked)
1 cup mixed nuts (almonds, hickory nuts, butternuts, or English walnuts), chopped
Sugar to taste

Directions

In a bowl, combine the chopped raisins, currants, figs, and citron.
Mix in the uncooked French Cream while it is still soft, before adding all the sugar.
Stir in the chopped nuts of your choice.
Form the mixture into balls, bars, or squares.

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.

Fig + mixed nutstop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together737 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Raisin + mixed nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together12 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins: Adds sweetness, chewy texture and body to the fruit mixture.
Figs: Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the mixture.
French cream: Binds the fruit and nuts together and adds richness and moisture.
Mixed nuts: Add crunch and contrast to the soft, chewy fruit.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, fig, cream, mixed nuts, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Datesfits better
Coconutfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, fig, cream, mixed nuts, sugar. 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.