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Dessert

Raisin Filling

A sweet filling made from sugar, boiling water, egg whites, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Raisin Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil sugar and water until it threads.

  2. Pour the mixture over the beaten egg whites and beat well.

  3. Add the chopped raisins and mix until 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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Egg + raisintop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,556 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, when boiled with water, forms a syrup that sets the whites.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lightness as they are beaten with the hot syrup.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be hot enough to be cooked to the threading stage. Pouring it slowly while beating keeps the hot syrup from scrambling the whites and lets them form a stable, smooth foam.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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