Skip to main content
Dessert

Fruit Candy

A confection made by boiling sugar, water, cream of tartar, and glucose, then adding fruit and cooling into bars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Fruit Candy

Why it works: Almond and brazil nut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Fruit Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. In a large pot, combine sugar, water, cream of tartar, and glucose.

  2. Cook over medium heat until it reaches a hard crack stage.

Candy the fruit

  1. Carefully add the mixed fruit and stir slowly for a few minutes until the fruit slides off the spatula easily.

  2. Pour the mixture onto a greased slab between iron bars.

  3. Cut into bars once cooled.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + brazil nuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Brazil nut + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Fig + datestop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Almond + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,093 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the sweet syrup that hardens around the fruit as it cools.
Cream of tartar
Acid that helps prevent the sugar from crystallising into grainy candy.
Glucose
Interferes with sugar crystal formation, keeping the candy smooth and clear.
Mixed fruit
Provides the flavour and texture of the candy, coated in the hardened syrup.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup to hard crack stage. Sugar syrup must reach the hard crack stage, around 150°C, so that it sets firm and brittle when cooled. Undercooked syrup stays sticky, while overcooked syrup can taste burnt.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, fig, almond, brazil nut, coconut):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, fig, almond, brazil nut, coconut. 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 candied fruit recipes

and Nuts 4 See all 29 →

You might also like

Stuffed DatesStuffed Dates32 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipes