Black chokeberry + Jew's ear
Aronia, the chokeberries, are deciduous shrubs in the family Rosaceae, native to eastern North America and most commonly found in wet woods and swamps. The genus is usually considered to contain two or three species, one of which is naturalized in Europe. A fourth form that has long been cultivated under the name Aronia is now considered to be an intergeneric hybrid, Sorbaronia mitschurinii.

Auricularia auricula-judae, known as the Jew's ear, wood ear, jelly ear or by a number of other common names, is a species of edible Auriculariales fungus found worldwide. The fruiting body is distinguished by its noticeably ear-like shape and brown colouration; it grows upon wood, especially elder. Its specific epithet is derived from the belief that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from an elder tree; the common name "Judas's ear" eventually became "Jew's ear", while today "jelly ear" and other names are sometimes used. The fungus can be found throughout the year in temperate regions worldwide, where it grows upon both dead and living wood.
Shared flavor compounds
These compounds appear in both Black chokeberry and Jew's ear, giving them a molecular basis for flavor affinity, the pairing principle articulated by Francois Benzi and implemented in flavor-pairing research.
Why it works
The flavor-pairing hypothesis proposes that ingredients sharing significant aromatic compounds harmonize on the palate. Black chokeberry and Jew's ear overlap on 20 key compound(s), which is why classic culinary traditions, and our deterministic matching algorithm, place them together.
- Pairing computed by: pairing-compute
- Methodology: deterministic compound-overlap matching (no LLM)
- Compound data: Wikidata + Wikidata
- Part of: Living Gastronomic Intelligence graph