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Dessert

Preserved Fruits

Preserved fruits are fruit cooked with sugar, sealed in jars, and stored for later use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,340 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

Preserved Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Select and wash the fruit, removing any imperfect pieces.

  2. Scald the fruit immediately after picking.

Make the preserves

  1. Cook the fruit until soft, then drain the juice through a jelly bag.

  2. Mix the juice with sugar and cook together until dissolved.

  3. Seal the juice in glass jars, wrapping them in paper for protection.

Seal and store

  1. When cool, cover the jelly with tissue paper soaked in brandy and seal with egg white.

  2. Store jars in a cool, dry, dark place.

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. Brandy + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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

Fruit
Provides the flavour and body of the preserve once cooked down and strained.
Sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps it set into a jelly when cooked.

The step that matters

Cook the juice with sugar until dissolved. Sugar must fully dissolve before the mixture is thickened, so that it sets evenly into a clear jelly instead of gritty or crystallised.

“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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