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Dessert

Dessert Dishes

A layered fruit dessert of strawberries, currants, and raspberries topped with brandy or wine and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: White currant and red currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Dessert Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Layer fine fresh strawberries, white and red currants, and white or red raspberries in a dessert dish.

  2. Strew each layer generously with sifted sugar.

Serve

  1. Just before serving, pour 1½ cups of brandy or white wine mixed with the strained juice of one small or half a large lemon over the top.

  2. Gently stir the fruit with a spoon before serving.

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. White currant + red curranttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Red currant + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit body and juicy sweetness that the syrup soaks into.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice, forming a syrup with the fruit.
Brandy or white wine
Adds aroma and a warm, boozy flavour that lifts the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sugar and brightens the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the liquor just before serving. Sugar draws juice out of the fruit, so the dish becomes watery if the brandy or wine is added long before serving. Adding it shortly before serving keeps the fruit firm and the flavours fresh.

Swap the white currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (red currant, sugar, brandy, lemon):

  1. Raspberryfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. White currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against red currant, sugar, brandy, lemon. 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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