Name: Glazed and Candied Fruits
Ingredients: sugar; raw fruit (e.g., apricots, cherries, pears); water; almonds

Why it works: Apricot and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Glazed and Candied Fruits

Ingredients

sugar
raw fruit (e.g., apricots, cherries, pears)
water
almonds

Directions

Prepare a syrup with sugar that measures 38° on a saccharometer.
Blanch the fruit until soft to allow sugar penetration.
Combine the fruit with 28° syrup and let it stand for 2 days.
Heat the syrup to 32° and add the fruit, then boil together.
Concentrate the syrup to 35° by heating over a coke fire.
Add more syrup and heat the mixture to 38°.
Transfer the hot mixture to dry jars or basins, cover with spirit-soaked paper, and seal.

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.

Apricot + peartop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together218 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together852 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Pear + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together175 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Sugar + peartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,079 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

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