Skip to main content
Preserve

Pricking of Candied Fruits

A method for preserving fruits by pricking, soaking, blanching, drying, and sugaring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pear and fig share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 65 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Pricking of Candied Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prick the fruits with copper needles or pins to prevent bursting.

  2. Soak the pricked fruits in a solution of 1 ounce of sulphite of soda in 6 gallons of water.

  3. Blanch the fruits in medium warm water, heating slowly until boiling.

  4. Remove the fruits with a skimmer or confectioners' fork and cool them in cold running water or light alum water (1 ounce to 8 gallons).

  5. Dry the fruits on white willow trays for 1 hour.

Syrup and soak

  1. Place the fruits in jars and pour over hot syrup, ensuring it reaches a temperature of 14° to 20° Beaume.

  2. Drain the fruits after 6 to 12 hours, reboil the syrup, and add sugar or glucose as needed.

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. Pear + figtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Fig + sugartop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,241 recipes

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

  3. Pear + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,079 recipes

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

  4. Pear + medlartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Fig + medlartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar or glucose
Sweetens the fruit and builds the syrup that replaces its water, preserving it.
Alum
Firms the fruit's flesh so it holds its shape during cooking and soaking.
Sulphite of soda
Helps the fruit keep its colour and firmness during the soaking stage.

The step that matters

Pricking the fruit before soaking. Pricking lets the sulphite solution and later syrup enter evenly and lets steam escape, so the skins do not burst during blanching.

Swap the medlar

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Medlarthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pear, fig, 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.

You might also like

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes