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Holiday Sandwiches

A sandwich made with raisins, currants, marmalade, spices, and crackers or bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Holiday Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the Triscuit crackers are crisp.

  2. Clean the raisins and currants, drain them well, seed the raisins, and cut them in half or smaller.

Make the filling

  1. Simmer the raisins, currants, sugar, and ⅓ cup boiling water until the liquid evaporates, then remove from heat.

  2. Drain the marmalade, using only the solid portion, then add the marmalade and other ingredients to the fruit mixture and mix well.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide the main sweet, chewy body of the filling.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and a small, tender fruit texture to the filling.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it dissolves, helps form a thick, spreadable mixture.
Orange marmalade
Adds citrus sweetness and a bright, slightly bitter aroma to the fruit.

The step that matters

Simmer until the liquid evaporates. Cooking the fruit with sugar and water softens it and dissolves the sugar. If the liquid is not fully evaporated, the filling stays wet and can soak into the crackers or bread, so it should be cooked until the mixture has reduced and thickened.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, orange, nutmeg, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Cranberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, orange, nutmeg, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, bread. 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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