Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Soup

A sweet fruit soup made with dried fruits, fresh apples, citrus, spices, sugar, and tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fruit Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Soak the fruit

  1. Soak the currants, seeded raisins, seedless raisins, sultana raisins, prunes, prunelles, apricots, and evaporated apples overnight in water.

Cook the soup

  1. In a large kettle, combine the soaked fruit with the soaking water, fresh apples, sugar, sliced lemons, sliced oranges, cinnamon, allspice, and cloves.

  2. Boil for several hours, ensuring the fruit is covered with boiling water.

  3. When nearly done, thicken the mixture with pearl tapioca and cook until clear.

  4. Strain the soup and add vanilla.

Store and serve

  1. Store in jars and serve hot as a fruit soup or chilled with chipped ice as a fruit punch.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Pearl tapioca
Thickens the liquid as it cooks, giving the soup its body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the citrus and fruit.
Prunes
Contribute body, natural sweetness and deep fruit flavour as they simmer.
Lemons
Add acidity that brightens the sweet dried fruit.

The step that matters

Thickening with pearl tapioca. Tapioca must be added near the end and cooked until clear, because it thickens as it heats and can clump or stay cloudy if undercooked or added too early.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, apricot, apple, sugar, lemon, orange, cinnamon. 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.

More fruit soup recipes

Mixed 4 See all 14 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes