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Dessert

Nut and Raisin Filling

A sweet filling made with raisins, nuts, egg white, lemon juice, salt, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and nuts work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Nut and Raisin Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Seed the raisins and chop them finely.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until stiff.

Make the filling

  1. Add the powdered sugar, chopped nuts, raisins, and lemon juice to the beaten egg white. Mix until well combined.

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. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Whipped to stiffness to give the filling a light, airy structure.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the filling.
Chopped nuts
Provide crunch and body that contrasts with the soft egg white.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the foam, adding sweetness without grittiness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the raisins and sugar.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until stiff. Egg white foam traps air through protein unfolding. If it is under-beaten, the filling will be loose and weep; over-beaten, it turns dry and grainy and folds poorly with the other ingredients.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, lemon, 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.

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