Name: Sultana Rolls
Ingredients: ½ pound baking powder cans; pistachio ice cream; ½ cup sultana raisins, soaked in brandy; thick whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla; claret sauce

Why it works: Pistachio and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 407 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Sultana Rolls

Ingredients

½ pound baking powder cans
pistachio ice cream
½ cup sultana raisins, soaked in brandy
thick whipped cream, sweetened and flavored with vanilla
claret sauce

Directions

Prepare

Fill baking powder cans with pistachio ice cream.
Sprinkle with sultana raisins that have been soaked in brandy.
Fill the centers with thick whipped cream that is sweetened and flavored with vanilla.

Freeze and serve

Freeze the rolls.
Serve with claret sauce.

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.

Pistachio + vanillatop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together407 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pistachio + raisintop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together63 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Brandy + vanillatop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + vanillatop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together782 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pistachio ice cream: Forms the frozen base that holds the shape of each roll.
Sultana raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness against the cold cream.
Thick whipped cream: Fills the centers, adding a light, airy richness to the ice cream.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pistachio, cream, brandy, vanilla, sauce):

Figfits better
Apricotfits better
Raspberryfits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pistachio, cream, brandy, vanilla, sauce. 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.