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Dessert

Imitation Fruit Nougat

A confection made by cooking sugar and glucose, folding in beaten egg whites, and adding cocoa butter and paraffin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cocoa butter share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 49 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Imitation Fruit Nougat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Dissolve sugar and glucose in water and cook to 250°F (120°C).

Combine with albumen

  1. Pour one-quarter of the mixture in a thin stream over the well-beaten albumen.

  2. Cook the mixture to 270°F (132°C) and pour half over the albumen batch in a thin stream.

  3. Cook again to 285°F (140°C) and pour all into the batch in a thin stream.

Finish and set

  1. Add melted cocoa butter and paraffin, then flavor to your liking.

  2. Stir well and pour into wafer-lined trays, or spread on a slab, cut, and wrap, or dip in chocolate.

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. Sugar + cocoa buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Egg + cocoa buttertop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Albumen (egg whites)
Whipped into a foam that gives the nougat its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, once cooked, the firm body that sets the nougat.
Glucose
Keeps the cooked sugar smooth and reduces crystallisation for a chewy texture.
Red a. b. gums
Thickens the mixture and adds chew, giving the nougat its elastic body.
White a. b. gums
Thickens the mixture and adds chew, giving the nougat its elastic body.
Cocoa butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Pouring the syrup in a thin stream. Pouring the hot syrup slowly while beating the albumen lets it cook the whites gradually and build a stable foam. Pouring too fast can deflate the foam or leave lumps of cooked syrup.

“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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