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Dessert

Feuit Icings

A layered confection made by heating cream, adding color and flavor, and incorporating chopped fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and pineapple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Feuit Icings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the layers

  1. Heat 5 pounds of cream in a basin over a pot of water, stirring until dissolved but not thin.

  2. Add a few drops of red food coloring and flavor with Nectar or Strawberry.

  3. Pour the mixture into a starch tray lined with strong Manila paper, spreading it in a thin layer.

  4. Dissolve 8 pounds of cream in the same way and stir in the chopped cherries, pineapple, citron, and apricots.

  5. Pour this mixture on top of the first layer and spread evenly.

  6. Melt 5 pounds of cream, color it bright green, and pour it on top of the last layer.

Set and finish

  1. Set aside until the next day, then turn the tray upside down on a table to release the cream.

  2. Remove the paper and use caramel to mark the surface in two directions, then cut into squares and crystallize.

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. Strawberry + pineappletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pineapple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together377 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Strawberry + apricottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together183 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cream + strawberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + pineappletop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,574 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the soft, sliceable base that holds the fruit layers together as it sets.
Cherries
Add fruit pieces and chewy texture within the cream layer.
Pineapple
Adds fruit pieces and a bright, tangy flavor to the middle layer.
Citron
Adds candied-fruit texture and aroma to the middle layer.
Apricots
Add fruit pieces and mild sweetness to the middle layer.

The step that matters

Heat the cream until dissolved but not thin. Cream heated gently and kept thick sets firm enough to hold its layers. Overheating thins it, so the layers may run together and fail to set cleanly when cooled.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, strawberry, pineapple):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Bananafits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, strawberry, pineapple. 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.

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