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Dessert

Frosted Fruits

A fruit salad of cherries, plums, and strawberries coated in beaten egg whites and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Frosted Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick over and wash the fruit.

  2. Whip the egg whites until frothy.

Coat and dry

  1. Dip the fruit in the beaten egg whites, then drain.

  2. Coat the fruit in powdered sugar.

  3. Place the fruit on a sheet of white paper in a pan.

  4. Dry the fruit, chill, and serve.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Plum + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Form a thin, sticky coating that the powdered sugar adheres to, giving the frosted finish.
Powdered sugar
Forms a crisp, sweet, dry frost over the fruit's coating as it dries.
Cherries
Main fruit being frosted; its natural sweetness and tartness contrast with the sugar coating.
Plums
Main fruit being frosted; its juicy flesh is sealed under the coating.
Strawberries
Main fruit being frosted; its soft flesh and aroma are preserved under the frosting.

The step that matters

Drain the fruit after dipping in egg whites. Excess liquid left on the fruit makes the coating thick and runny, so the powdered sugar dissolves into it instead of forming a dry, even frost. Draining lets only a thin film remain to hold the sugar.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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