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Dessert

Fruit Tablets

Fruit tablets are a sweet candy made from glucose, sugar, water, acid, lemon oil, and dusted with magnesia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fruit Tablets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine glucose, sugar, and water in a large kettle and bring to a boil.

  2. Cover the kettle with a tin or wooden lid and steam for 5 minutes.

  3. Wash the sides of the kettle and continue cooking until the mixture reaches 300°F (150°C).

Shape the tablets

  1. Pour the hot mixture onto a cold, greased slab and fold in the edges.

  2. Add tartaric or citric acid, flavor, and color to your preference, then knead well.

  3. Once cool, run the mixture through a tablet roller.

  4. Dust with a little magnesia and mix until the tablets appear white.

Store

  1. Store in bottles or cans.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Glucose
Keeps the candy smooth and soft by resisting sugar crystallization.
Sugar
Provides the bulk of the sweetness and structure of the tablets as it sets.
Tartaric or citric acid
Adds tartness that balances the sweetness.
Lemon oil
Supplies the aroma and flavor of the tablets.

The step that matters

Cooking to 300°F (150°C). Sugar syrup must reach the hard-crack stage for the tablets to set firm. Undercooked syrup stays sticky, while overcooked syrup turns bitter and brittle, so a thermometer helps you hit the target.

“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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