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Dessert

Sugared Fruits

A dish of ripe fruits soaked in a sugar syrup and served on a buttered plate.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sugared Fruits

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  3. Add lemon juice.

  4. Keep the syrup warm in a basin of hot water.

Dip the fruit

  1. Dip ripe fruits into the syrup.

  2. For currants, hold by the stems to dip.

  3. For grapes, use a long pin to dip and dry.

  4. For oranges, peel and separate into small pieces.

  5. Dip the orange pieces using the pin.

  6. Place the dipped fruits on a buttered plate to cool.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Grape + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + grapetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,412 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

  5. Grape + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,028 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Forms the syrup that coats the fruit and hardens into a glassy shell as it cools.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps keep the sugar syrup from turning grainy or crystallising.

The step that matters

Keep the syrup warm in a basin of hot water. If the syrup cools, it thickens and can crystallise, leaving a grainy coating instead of a smooth, glossy one. Keeping it warm keeps it fluid enough to dip evenly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, grape, orange, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, grape, orange, butter. 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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