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Plum, Cherry, Pineapple and Peach Soup

A chilled soup made from plum, cherry, pineapple, and peach, sweetened and thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and peach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plum, Cherry, Pineapple and Peach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Cook the fruit with water until very soft.

  2. Mash the mixture, then sift the mixture.

  3. Sweeten slightly to taste.

  4. Thicken with corn starch, stirring until smooth.

  5. Add lemon or orange juice to enhance flavor.

Serve

  1. Serve very cold with chipped ice.

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. Plum + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Cherry + peachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Plum + pineappletop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together147 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol (fusel, malty).

  4. Pineapple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together168 recipes

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

  5. Plum + cherrytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, body-rich soup as it heats and gelatinizes.
Mixed fruit
Provides the main flavor, sweetness and body of the soup once cooked and mashed.
Lemon juice or orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavor.

The step that matters

Thicken with corn starch, stirring until smooth. Cornstarch must be fully dispersed before or as it heats, or it clumps. It thickens only when the liquid reaches a simmer and the starch granules swell, so stir constantly while it heats.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (plum, cherry, pineapple, peach, corn, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, cherry, pineapple, peach, corn, 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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