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Dessert

Fruit Bar

Fruit Bar is a sweet confection made with walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, cherries, pineapple, citron, coconut, sugar, glucose, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut 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 66 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fruit Bar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts, cherries, pineapple, citron, and coconut in a bowl and set aside.

Make and set

  1. In a large pot, cook the sugar and glucose with enough water to dissolve them until the mixture reaches 290°F (143°C).

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the nut and fruit mixture until well combined.

  3. Pour into a greased pan and let cool before cutting into bars.

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. Walnut + brazil nuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Pineapple + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together651 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + coconuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together606 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + pineappletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the set candy base that holds the nuts and fruit together as bars.
Glucose
Stops the sugar from crystallising, keeping the candy smooth and less grainy.
English walnuts
Add crunch and body to the bars through the nut-and-fruit mixture.
Pecan halves
Add crunch and body to the bars through the nut-and-fruit mixture.
Brazil nuts
Add crunch and richness to the bars through the nut-and-fruit mixture.
Cherries
Add chewy texture and sweetness to the bars.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar and glucose to 290°F (143°C). This temperature sets the sugar to a firm, brittle-when-cool candy base. Undercooking leaves the bars soft and sticky, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and make it bitter.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, brazil nut, coconut, 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.

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